


Rainbow's End

by Vee



Series: Rainbow's End [1]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shop, Alternate Universe - Hipsters, Alternate Universe - Writing & Publishing, Anal Sex, Hipsters, M/M, Manpain, Oral Sex, Threesome - M/M/M, Unrequited Lust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2013-07-08
Packaged: 2017-11-21 13:38:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 90,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vee/pseuds/Vee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kagami is a successful sports journalist starting his first novel. He sets up workshop in the Rainbow’s End coffeehouse, which is probably the most pretentiously hipster place he could have imagined ending up. There he makes some acquaintances that will throw all of his plans off track, but not exactly in a bad way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I need to sit everyone down and explain this first. Most important thing to explain, before anything else, is that I am largely incapable of writing anything short. So this is destined to be long. Really long. The premise is “Coffeehouse A/U”, because I realized that I’ve been fandom life for over a decade and have never written a coffeehouse A/U (what is wrong with me). Now, because I can’t do anything halfway, I took the concept way too far.  
> Set in America. The West, at any rate. This seems inconsequential to me. I write what I know, and setting an entire novel in Japan was enough. Their names remain. Now, since I had no idea what to do with coffeehouse people, I again went to what I know: hipsters, writing and publishing!
> 
> Instead of being King B-Ball Swag in this universe, Aomine is King Hipster. I think that alone is worth the price of admission. Let’s begin.

Alex is in my dream again. She looks sort of like she did when we first met, in dire need of a haircut and pushing her bangs aside constantly. It’s a bizarre take on something that actually happened and it’s also a dream I used to have when I was a kid, meshed together in that way dreams manage. The details aren’t important, because there’s nothing less engaging than hearing the details of someone else’s dream. But Alex is there, as if she broke into the scene like color refracted through glass, with her hands in the pockets of her hoodie whenever she isn’t messing with her hair. Just like when I told her I was going to move away, going to try and write a novel.

She lowers her head and glances aside for a moment, and before she can stop herself I see her head start to shake. When it really happened, it was only a moment, and she’d try to make up for it over the course of the next year with praise and encouragement, but she could never assuage my conviction that she didn’t believe I could make it. Now the memory is invading my dreams. I could have been dreaming of so many more interesting and gratifying things. Instead there’s my editor, wearing a look on her face that eats, and eats, and eats at my confidence in the worst moments of light sleep or heavy daydreaming.

Morning is the worst; waking up in the morning, trying to figure out what I’m doing on any given day. Sitting on an open schedule, knowing I have to fill it with work. Knowing I have to wake up. Budget my time. Put on pants (that’s my least favorite part). Doubts come flooding in as my eyes start to focus, and normally I let the overwhelming silence of the room get me restless enough to finally get up and remember I have absolutely nothing to doubt.

The room isn’t particularly quiet this morning, though. I remember as I grope for my phone to see what time it is, that I have a boyfriend now. It’s been a nice couple of weeks, and somehow I’ve managed not to let it distract me. Not too badly, anyway. I’ve only had a couple of mornings to suss out his habits, but I didn’t expect him to be a snorer. Not like this. Not at all like this.

The noise is actually quite horrible, really. And it’s 7:18 a.m., a.k.a. way too early for me to be thinking about putting on pants.

“Kuroko,” I say, as firmly as I can in a sleepy, grunting voice. I repeat myself and kick my leg back to the other side of the bed. No response.

“Yes?” His voice comes from the doorway. I look up and over to see him standing in one of my wrinkled dress shirts and a pair of socks, holding a mixing bowl in his hands. As always, he shows no emotion as he says, “I’m sorry if I woke you. I’m going to make pancakes. I’ve never tried them before. Do you have eggs?”

I’m not awake enough for this. I stare at him open-mouthed for a few moments. In any other situation I would be distracted by how adorably huge my shirt is on his frame. I can only wonder who is sawing logs in the bed next to me as my brain starts to reacquaint itself with my timeline. Something is telling me that I’ve forgotten something very important about last night. A feeling of dread curls up from my stomach and tickles the back of my throat with pre-emptive sickness as I turn halfway.

Kuroko turns to walk out of the room. “I’ll find them. Hold his nose, by the way. That’s the only thing that will wake him up.”

His stupid glasses without the lenses are still on, skewed aside where one arm is thrown over his forehead. His mouth is wide open in sleep and he’s completely clothed. Even with his face mostly hidden, I recognize his standard hipster uniform of a shirt, tie, and cardigan. For the movie deals and major house advances, you’d think he could afford better than Old Navy, or at least you’d expect him to be hipster enough to go unbranded. My first instinct is to shove the pillow into his face. Not to suffocate him, but because Kuroko told me to hold his nose and a pillow seems more my style.

I slap his arm instead. “Jesus Christ, quiet down!”

He opens one eye but it’s obvious that he doesn’t really see me. His breath clicks in his throat and he grunts before pulling his arm away and trying to get more comfortable. In my bed. In most of my bed. He’s back to sleep in an instant. At least he stopped snoring. At least nothing really happened last night.

Nothing  _really_  happened; which isn’t to say that things, in the less substantial sense, didn’t happen. But Aomine is still in my bed, while my boyfriend is in the next room attempting his way through breakfast, apparently okay with the scenario. This makes sense to me. Because I can weave the threads together and realize how we got here. On the other hand, anyone else – anyone else who knows us, for instance – would be (and probably will be) demanding to know what the fuck is happening.

I suppose it’s time to tell a story, though it’s hardly the one I set out expecting.


	2. Rainbow's End

Sometime in the 1960’s, the place opened. At the time it was an Irish pub meant to attract the crowds from all the sporting events at the stadium on the end of B Street. When the stadium was shuttered in lieu of the shiny new complex on the waterfront about twenty years later, the pub fell into dive-bar obscurity. The owners sold it in the 90’s, in time for the stars to align at the cusp of the artisan coffee craze. The new proprietors kept the name and turned the shitty bar on the corner into a coffeehouse complete with local art, organic tea, ivy growing in through the windows near the patio, and a piano.  _A piano,_ I thought with mild ennui as I surveyed the place, new to the neighborhood, the town, and the business of working for myself. I was a few months off from having anyone else in my apartment, much less two men at once. Okay, that sounds a lot more lurid than it seems. I promise this isn’t that sort of story.

Okay, maybe it is. A little bit. Just a little bit.

The patrons were trying to ignore me, but I stood out. I could see their hesitant stolen glances, wondering where I’d come from and whether I’d wandered in unaware of the dress code. The dress code, it seemed from the clientele scattered around on the mix of couches and kitschy mis-matched tables, had something to do with thrift stores and scarves. A girl with messy braids almost smiled at me, but I might have misread the expression. She returned to her e-reader.

No one here, I was convinced within moments, had ever read a shred of my work.

I claimed one of the tables near the back with my laptop case and decided it would be the perfect place to settle in, do some people watching, and get a leg up on my inspiration. Not many distractions. No television, and only the most offensively indie music playing on the sound system. All I had to do was log off of Twitter and promise myself to at least figure out where I was going with the framework of my first novel.

I walked up to the counter and squinted at the menu board, trying to figure out what the place was all about. The entire thing was hand-written in chalk, with some of the words making typographic art. I’d never have gone near one of these places in my younger days, not even a few months ago. I stuck to gas station coffee and wrote at home or at the office. The office had been easy. I asked Alex where to go to get my mind in the right place for fiction, and she told me a coffeehouse. She laughed at the time, so maybe I missed a joke that was now on me. I was starting to wonder if there was such a thing as plain black coffee anymore when I realized there was someone in front of me.

My eyes focused on him before I even had a chance to react to his materialization. “Have you been helped?”

I took one step back in spite of myself, and wondered how I’d missed him. “Wow, you really came out of nowhere.”

“You seem confused by the menu.”

Though he was right, he didn’t offer to help me, which seemed rather rude. I knitted my brow and shot a sharp glare at him. He was considerably shorter than me, pale hair and sad, pale eyes, the sort of wimpy guy I’d expect to inhabit a place like this. He was my only hope, though.

“I just want some plain coffee. You guys have that, right?”

He answered bluntly without batting an eye. “It depends on the sort of coffee you like. If someone comes in and asks for black coffee I’ll usually give them Columbian brewed.” The intensity of his demeanor seemed to have some root in genuine honesty. The rudeness had been my conflation. He was soft-spoken, yes, but so tactless that he seemed detached from our encounter completely. Maybe that’s how you had to be, to get over the pretention. Either that, or he was a robot.

“Okay, give me that,” I said incredulously. I had no idea what he was going on about, and shrugged. “Geez, I feel like I need a Master’s Degree in coffee just to walk in here.”

I received no reply to my annoyance, and the barista returned a minute later, sliding a red coffee mug forward on a saucer.

“What is this?” I asked.

“I’m sorry, I assumed since you brought your computer that you’d be drinking it here.”

I blinked at it like the concept of a coffee mug was foreign to me. “I’m just not used to it, is all. I expected a paper cup with a… sleevy holder thingy.” That, and I wondered how I was going to take a saucer back to my table with any semblance of dignity.

I paid and glanced at his nametag as he changed my bills.  _Kuroko._

“May I offer you some advice?” he asked, dropping the change into my hand.

“I guess so.”

“That’s usually someone else’s spot. You may want to move to another table.”

My first instinct was to bristle at the idea of being pushed around like I’d wandered into a rough neighborhood that smelled of hazelnuts and patchouli, with the indignity of the saucer added like a blow to the back.

Kuroko picked up on the shift in my mood. “It was only a suggestion.”

“I’ll stay where I am. Thanks for the advice.”

“You’re welcome.”

I thought little of it, beyond that. For an hour I failed to focus, perusing ESPN and Yahoo! Sports in lieu of Twitter, logging into Twitter anyway, reading an article on The New York Times, and opening at least three tabs of unrelated but interesting links I saw along the way. Finally I realized what I was doing, remembered that the money in my bank account was (though considerable for the time being) finite, and that I had to come up with a follow-up to convince Alex she’d made the right move in letting me break from genre.

I was a sports historian, and only the niggling doubts in my mind wanted to convince me I wasn’t a novelist. Writing was easy so I had to do something different to keep myself interested. I had something vague in mind, but it wasn’t enough to pin down in the few minutes I decided to focus. Besides, my coffee mug was already empty.

Kuroko was still at the counter when I approached for a refill. “It costs a dollar,” he advised me, and when I told him to go ahead his eyes flashed almost imperceptibly at the door. I heard the bells jingle on the knob, alerting everyone that someone had entered. He handed me the freshly topped-off mug and, when I exchanged it with a dollar, he asked, “What are you writing?”

“How do you know I’m a writer?”

He just blinked at me. “So you’re not.”

“No!” I was aggravated by his tactlessness, somehow, as well as his apparent disconnect from emotional cues. “No, I am, but I’m wondering how you could have known that when all I’ve been doing for the last hour is dicking around on websites.”

“I’m not sure. I can tell, though. What do you write?”

I thought nothing of his weird remarks and decided to indulge him. “I wrote a few sports books. Team histories, two of them. Another, about the evolution of regional rivalries. My latest was an oral history of the Boston Celtics. I guess you could say I’m a bit of a journalist, to that end. Worked for a newspaper up in Philadelphia until this year. I’m starting my first novel.”

“That’s good to know.” While I puzzled over that answer, Kuroko glanced just beyond my shoulder.

This time, I was well aware that someone was close by. Moreover, I knew the sort of prickly cactus aura of someone who wasn’t quite pleased with me. The stern clearing of a throat helped tip me off. I turned halfway and was going to tell whoever it was to stop invading my space.

Instead, he leaned closer to the counter as if I wasn’t even there. “Tetsu,” he addressed Kuroko directly. “Did someone leave their things on my table?”

“Aomine, someone’s sitting there today. You can sit at another table.”

The scoff and chuckle I heard made me immediately brace myself, and my eyes scanned the figure so rudely horning in on my personal bubble.

Chambray shirt, knit tie, plaid scarf wrapped pretentiously around his neck, and a plain white cardigan. His hair was trimmed short and he wore glasses, but when he turned his attention to me I noticed that they didn’t even have any lenses in them. There was a hoop ring on his eyebrow and a white stud on his bottom lip that stood out against his cinnamon skin. I glanced down and found my basketball shoes toe to toe with his dingy Converse All-Stars. His jeans were cuffed above his bare ankles.

 _I’ve found him,_  I wanted to whisper in awe.  _I’ve found King Hipster._

“I’m sorry, was I interrupting?” he asked, so flippantly that I wanted to make something of it, as they say.

“Yeah. I was talking to him.” I pointed at Kuroko.

He barely acknowledged me, and continued his conversation without breaking stride. I didn’t move over to offer him any breadth. “I actually can’t sit at another table. You know that.”

 _Jackass_ , I thought, and stopped just short of whispering.

“You must be talking about my stuff,” I said. He turned his attention back to me with a miserable look, lip curled in a slight sneer. “I don’t mean to eavesdrop, but you’re so rude I couldn’t help it.”

I heard him give me a throaty, deep chuckle, and then I had his attention completely. Kuroko had called him Aomine, hadn’t he? I was hesitant to use his name, though. I was holding out for some decency, which I didn’t really expect to receive. If not that, then some good old fashioned hostility would have to do on both our parts. But no names.

“I’ll buy your next cup if you give up your seat.”

“I don’t think I’ll need another cup. Besides, I’ve just hit my stride. No deal.” I breezed past him, feeling a rush as I smiled in the wake of our confrontation. “What’s so special about that seat, anyway?”

“I write best at that seat. It’s wasted on someone like you.” He regarded my t-shirt and jeans with a poisonous sweep of his eyes, and pushed his fake glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“Aomine—“

“Stay out of this, Tetsu.”

Pausing before taking my seat again, I quirked an eyebrow at him. I was quite convinced that he had no idea who I was. That was a great thing to feel, eminence. “Oh yeah? Well, that’s a shame. Sorry you won’t be able to work on your indie screenplay, then.”

I sat down, feeling more inspired than I had since I’d first moved into town. Before I could get a good look at my soon-to-not-be empty page, however, Aomine pushed my laptop closed and leaned over the table to narrow his almond-shaped eyes at me.

“Do you know who I am?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing.” I’d managed to be humble with Kuroko, but I was ready to throw my accolades in this guy’s face, if it came to that. I sat back with my hands behind my head.

“Looked at the New York Times Bestseller list recently?”

“Yes, it’s usually full of celebrities and shit Oprah’s been shilling.”

“My name is Aomine Daiki, look it up. And know your place.” He was possessed of an intensity I’d only seen while writing about the fiercest sports rivalries of the century. Of course, it did nothing but encourage me. I couldn’t figure out how someone could be so fired up about something as ultimately inconsequential as a chair. It felt like grade school, and I wanted to be a total ass and ask him if he wrote his name on it. Instead, I brushed his hand away and moved to open my laptop again.

“Well. If you’ll excuse me, I have to get started. Thanks for the tip.”

“Yeah, good luck,” he muttered as he turned and walked to the table across from mine. He collapsed into the chair like a marionette off its strings. He barely reigned in his petulance with every movement, and flipped his screen up with one finger. It made me want to laugh, but I was too busy feeling something I hadn’t felt in months.

I glanced aside and somehow I knew the weird little barista would be watching me. Sure enough, Kuroko’s eyes were curiously directed at my table, which was soon to become my regular spot. Something about the entire encounter had given me the boost I needed. I half-nodded at Kuroko and dove into the document just as someone else at the counter shouted at him to pay attention and do an Arabica pour-over.

Recklessly, I started to write. I didn’t even care what it was about. I just started to put things into words, and refused to stop. Occasionally, I’d glance up, and Aomine would catch my eye. He sneered whenever he did. It spurred me on. Only when he left the shop to take a phone call did I chance tabbing over to Google and plugging in his name. The auto-complete knew his name within five characters. I saw the title of what I would soon learn was his bestseller, Myranda Wall, as one of the options. Beneath that, another suggestion caught my eye: “Aomine Daiki Generation of Miracles”.

The curiosity was too much. I clicked it, just as I heard a voice very close by. Directly behind me, in fact.

“Oh. So you honestly didn’t know who he is.”

I started and turned in my chair, knowing it was Kuroko but too stunned to react with anything but a mild heart attack. “Fuck’s sake, give me a break!”

“I’ve been here for about two minutes.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better!”

“If the Generation of Miracles sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’ve heard of them without really hearing about each of them. Not individually, at least. People didn’t like to talk about them without mentioning the rest, because it wasn’t as good a story.”

I perused the Wikipedia page dedicated to the subject, and all at once it came flooding back to me. It had been about five years ago, when I was in high school. This group of five kids from a school in California came out of nowhere and became mass media darlings. I don’t remember what each of them did, separately, but I’d heard my dad talking about them being writers, artists, musicians, photographers. All of them were nationally recognized and lauded by luminaries in their fieldseven at such young ages, and all of them happened to pal around together, intending to make good on promises of huge projects with the right funding. Apparently they made one of the biggest deals in history to develop a film project called Miracles, only to have the whole thing dissolve in the eleventh hour. The media called them the Generation of Miracles from then on, and I hadn’t paid much attention after that. I was usually flipping to the sports page by the time I even digested the headline. If I’d taken a little extra time, I’d have seen Aomine Daiki’s name in those sub-headers since the dissolution of the Generation of Miracles.

He’d been, the article went on to say, first to make good since then, with his postmodern style that took David Foster Wallace and ran it over with James Joyce a few times. Aomine didn’t seem to write with any particular necessity or intention, and instead managed to do magical things with words themselves, which led to endless debates on whether the young prodigy’s works were a satire of language itself, freeform poetry, or garbage. He may have been a subject of controversy, but it was very lucrative controversy. His most cohesively narrative novel, The Way of Hurricanes,had secured a movie deal earlier that year. I would have expected to be scowling at such a list of accomplishments being attached to such an asshole, but unexpectedly I felt my excitement soar.

“You’re smiling.”

Kuroko was still next to me. “Yeah, because I thought this whole writing a novel thing was going to be boring. I came from the world of sports; competition drives me. I thought it was going to be a walk in the park, getting this done and capped off and sent out, no challenge to it at all. But now I’m pumped!”

I looked up at Kuroko, who opened his mouth to say something but refocused his attention when Aomine walked back into our scene.

“Tetsu,” he began, ignoring me completely. “If I run off for a bit, can you watch my things?”

“Yes. What’s the matter?”

He ‘tsk’ed bitterly. “Momoi’s in a snit about something at the apartment. I need to go, but I’ll be right back.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t let this guy do anything to my stuff!” He pointed at me with a flick of his wrist.

“I’ve got a name.”

“Don’t really care.”

“It’s Kagami. You need to get used to it. I’m going to be seeing a lot of you, if you keep hanging around here.”

“Ass. Why did you have to choose  _my_ coffeehouse?”

I felt a strange lightness of certitude as I looked over and shrugged, catching Kuroko in my periphery. It wasn’t entirely about needling Aomine. It was something else, but it was something I felt deeply. “I don’t know, I just really think this place is… inspiring.”


	3. Red Line

At home, hunched over the breakfast bar I’d temporarily converted into a desk, armed with all the creature comforts of coffee and my favorite music and no pants, I was facing a peculiar dilemma.

“Oh my god, I can’t write.” I stared at the screen and said it out loud, wondering what had happened between the hell-for-leather session at Rainbow’s End that afternoon and my sudden spiral into utter lack of inspiration. I read back over what I’d managed earlier, and could hardly believe it was my writing. The flow was so purposeful, the language witty and, at times, acerbic. Somewhere along the line I’d decided I was writing the story of estranged brothers, but my subconscious really knew what that was all about. The fact that I’d gotten past the sentry neuroses in order to even think of writing it in earnest was the biggest shock. That it was _good_ seemed almost secondary.

I tabbed over to my Internet browser. I had a _Rolling Stone_ article pulled up on the magazine’s website, pulled from the archives of three years ago.

> Icarus Descending
> 
> _Matt Taibbi takes a look at the fall of the Generation of Miracles, the culture of prodigy worship, and the future of America’s artistic sweethearts._
> 
> “You can see the edge of Francis Ford Coppola’s property from here.” Akashi Seijurou strikes me as an anachronism. The soul of the old world has been transplanted into him, but there’s still debate in my mind as to whether he is a Renaissance man in the making, or simply a Godfather. “I met him when I was seven. Told him I wanted to make movies. He laughed and said to look him up again when I was ready to start. Two months ago he was ready to finance _Miracle._ ”
> 
> He’s barely capping five and a half feet and leaning on the railing of the veranda at his family’s Sonoma estate. Hills full of vineyards roll beyond, and it’s a wonder he could have grown up surrounded by such lush privilege, only to create such acute and incisive portraits of horror and despair. He went beyond the Student Academy Awards like success was a game of leapfrog, debuting at the Sundance Film Festival with _Anguine_ in 2007. He was only 17 years old. Unlikely, yes. But he’ll be the last to rest on his laurels. “They say art for art’s sake, but that’s ridiculous. It’s not worth making anything if I’m not the best. The others can talk all they want about how it will never be the same after this, but I intend to be even better on my own.”
> 
> No stranger to the ire of his peers, Akashi Seijurou has been the subject of some rather vicious and intriguing rumors. So what does he say to the rumors that plague the dissolution of the team known as the Generation of Miracles, and the suggestion that the onus of their combined success fell on a little-mentioned sixth person, a muse that cut ties with the group only to watch their ambitions crumble from afar?
> 
> I ask him. He does not answer. The look on his face tells me to change the subject.

I’d already been through the article twice. I skipped through a significant chunk of Taibbi’s bloated presentation and re-read the bit about Aomine Daiki again; one bit in particular that really made me wonder.

> The question is, will there be another Myranda Wall? Many critics go so far as to assume that Aomine’s talent for the impressionist narrative has already petered out, if his recent short stories are any suggestion. “I’m trying to write for me, the way I want to write,” he tells me. The meeting is a tense one already. He’s tired and seems entirely more interested in his lunch. “I’m the only one who can write something better. But I’m going to make it work. I’ll show him I can do it.”
> 
> I ask him who he means. He won’t say, and ends the interview abruptly. I managed longer than I expected, given his track record with the media.  

I tabbed back to my own story, highlighted a block of text and my finger hovered over the Delete key.

Before I could give in to the more destructive of my creative instincts my phone rang, vibrating the whole counter when it did.

I knew it was Alex. If it wasn’t my father, it would be no one else. Dad wasn’t home until the late evenings, and tended not to call me unless the Steelers won. “Yeah?”

“Good, you’re alive.” She sounded acerbic as ever, but motherly in her own unusual way.

“Currently fighting a block, but alive in a manner of speaking, yes.” I balanced the phone on my shoulder and stood, adjusting my boxers where they’d twisted around my waist a bit.

“Wow. This is a far cry from your Twitter updates earlier. What happened to all that creative energy you were getting so touchy-feely about?”  

“I don’t know. I got home and it’s like it disappeared.”

“It’s a new environment. It might take a while to feel that comfort, I guess.” We met in middle school, when she became the first English teacher to take particular note of my talents. She installed me as the editor of the school newspaper in high school via some connections and a strongly-worded recommendation to the club sponsor, and had stayed with me ever since. Every now and then, despite her tendency to be blunt and more than a little lecherous, she still spoke like a teacher.

“Weird thing is, the minute I started to write at that coffeehouse everything came very naturally.”

“Oh yeah? Care to tell me what the book’s going to be about?”

I almost slipped. I almost said ‘Himuro’ blatantly. I stopped myself just short of the embarrassment. “A family drama. I’m still trying to decide on the conflict. I don’t want to make it something cliché like cancer, but I don’t want to write about something I don’t know, either.”

“So that limits most things.” She was still so skeptical. I wanted to throw the doubt back in her face, as I always tended to.

“Watch it.”

“If you limit yourself to what you know, you’re going to end up writing either a book about dudes who play sports, or a melodrama. You know that.”

“Maybe I’ll do a little of both.”

“Don’t play with melodrama,” she said warningly.

I laughed. “How about brothers who go to play for rival teams? That’d be right up my alley.”

“Brothers.” She said it plainly enough, but with just a touch of amusement that indicated she knew exactly where I was going. “Are you really going to go there?”

I ignored her, but she was used to that. I would come around to face the facts when I was good and ready. “I think I might head back to the coffeehouse. I don’t like the vibe here.”

“Think of how you can make your apartment more like the coffeehouse, then.”

I was about to tell her that I couldn’t very well cart my new rival home with me, but then I considered how many more questions that would raise and wisely shut my mouth. 

~*~

“You’re back?”

I obviously was, walking into Rainbow’s End and toting my laptop under my arm. Kuroko didn’t seem the type who was susceptible to sarcasm, though, so I held my tongue.

“Yup,” I answered with a sigh, walking back to my adopted corner with the intention of setting up shop. The place had cleared out since my last appearance, and only a couple talking over lattes remained near the front windows. “You’ve been here a very long time.” I stopped next to the counter and shot Kuroko an incredulous glare. “Are you working a double?”

“I was about to get off work.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “I’ve had a normal shift. Do you mind if I join you for a moment before I leave?”

At first, the suggestion nettled me. I wanted to dive back into work as quickly as possible, but Kuroko seemed well-intentioned and I didn’t want to make being an asshole my M.O. when guys like Aomine were already regulars. “Sure, that’s fine.”

“What do you want to drink?”

“I was just going to get a regular coffee again, I—“

“Anything you want. It’s on me.”

I paused, next to the table and about to lower my laptop case into the chair. “Why?” I narrowed my eyes at him. No one could tell, usually, that I was gay. There was no way this guy could have figured that out and wanted to move in on the territory. Besides, how was I his type? Opposites attract, certainly, but the only explanation for him being attracted to me was that he _liked_ to be steamrolled in conversation.

“Because I get drinks for free and I’m using your time,” he said simply.

Maybe I’d been flattering myself. “Oh, Okay. Yeah, then get me a large whatever you’re having.”

He walked up to the table a few minutes later, startled me, and handed me a cold styrofoam cup with a straw poking out.

“What is this?”

“It’s a milkshake.”

“Is there coffee in it?”

“No.”

“Why would I want this from a coffeehouse?” I nearly barked. The couple at the front glanced our way for just a moment. I decided to lower my voice.

As I could have expected, Kuroko was unfazed. He moved my empty laptop case out of the chair and took over the seat, facing me. “Because it’s what I always order.”

I’d walked into it. I decided to enjoy it, even though I could practically feel the imminent sugar crash already. “So what did you want to talk about?”

“This coffeehouse. I started working here three years ago.”

“That’s nice.”

“I graduated from high school three years ago.”

I didn’t know where he was going with it, but the strange assumption that I would care made me assume there was more to the story. I was listening. “Okay…”

“I moved here from San Francisco. Aomine followed me. Then the others.”

For a minute, I didn’t know what he meant. I leaned back in my chair and heard it creak with the shift of my weight. It seemed such a normal thing at that point, to narrow my eyes at everything he said. Then, it all started to click. His big blue eyes fixed on me as I stared him down, lips pursed around his straw while the pieces fell into place.   

“You mean the Generation of Miracles.”

He stirred his straw around in his cup, looking at the lid and nodding at me as if the revelation was inconsequential.

“You were the sixth, then. Every article mentions him. This rumor that no one could prove. That was _you?_ ” I would have thrown back a cup of coffee in my frustrated moment of contemplation that followed, but all I had available was a straw. It didn’t have the same effect, I’m sure.

“That was me, yes. All of the ideas for _Miracle_  were mine. The idea for Myranda Wall was mine, too.” He went on drinking his milkshake, glancing aside as I tried to remember how to speak.

“So you… wait. You just fucked off like that? Left them all floundering?”

“We had creative differences,” he said simply.

“Why should I even believe this? It’s like you just found me, bought me a drink, and decided to tell me that you invented sliced bread.”

 “You don’t need to believe it. But I’m an honest person. I thought you should know.”

My lip screwed into a sneer before I could stop it. “Why?”

He shrugged. “I like how you talked about writing. And I love ideas. I love giving them to other people. It seems like you appreciated the attention. You even came back.”

I blinked a couple of times, trying to find some glimmer of a tell in his stupidly placid eyes. “I came back because I got all my writing done here earlier.”

“That’s exactly right.”

My first instinct was to put my hands up, surrender, grab my things, and walk out without a word. This wasn’t the way it worked. When he said “muse,” when _everyone_ said “muse,” surely it meant the reason for art. Gala to Salvador Dali, Musch Eluard to Man Ray. What he was suggesting bordered on the metaphysical, and I didn’t buy it. Nevertheless, even as my face twitched with unspoken frustration at the concept, my fingers itched with the need to write.

“I want to help you,” he went on when I didn’t speak. “That’s all. Enjoy your milkshake. I’m sorry that you wanted coffee instead.”

He stood up and was going to depart, just as easy as that. Even with the bomb he set off in my mind, he was just going to walk away from the destruction without a care. I was some time from learning that this was simply his way.

My mouth was gaping like a fish and I didn’t feel a particular need to close it as my eyes darted around and I put some numbers together. Years, timelines. All the Wikipedia pages I’d opened across a bar of new tabs in my browser earlier that day. I bent one eyebrow up critically and pointed at him while he was still pulling his bag onto his shoulder. “Myranda Wall came out after everyone split up.”

“That’s right,” he said. I just narrowed my eyes. He wasn’t ready to say anything, but Kuroko’s determination to leave my company was suddenly urgent. “I don’t want to talk about it. Will you be back tomorrow?”

“I suppose.” I dragged my hand over my face and leaned back into my chair, spreading out in all directions. I felt suddenly tired.

“Okay. I work in the afternoon.”

“Mmhmm.”

“What’s the title?” He asked, a few steps across the floor but not even halfway to the door. I stopped sulking when I realized it was a question. After straightening up, I shrugged and told him the truth.

“I usually think of titles last.” Because titles were my weakest suit.

He took a deep breath and turned just slightly enough that I could see his face. “Call it Red Line. For now at least.”

I’d grown up near enough to Boston that I knew it was the name of the city’s main transit line. But then I also knew it was, or could be, an allusion to the red string of fate. The maximum operational speed of an internal combustion engine. So many things. By the time I finished thinking about it to the extent I wanted to, I realized it was perfect.

And Kuroko was gone.

 

 


	4. Way to Go

I got up to take a piss after my third coffee of the evening. Kuroko had strolled into work at four o’clock and I was already there, itching to begin. The time had come to actually start whittling some characters and situations out of the disconnected prose I’d managed previously, an endeavor which only became uncomfortable a couple of hours into the task. Aomine came in not long after, but seemed absorbed in his own scowling business. I thought I’d fallen under his radar, except that when I came back from the restroom he was sitting at my table and reading my work.

I wasn’t used to such gross intrusions of privacy, and maybe the overwhelming shock is what kept me calm as I came up behind him and grabbed his collar. “Nope.” I tugged the fabric to feel a bit of resistance and tried not to seethe too much. “This is not okay.”

He leaned back into my grip and reached up to calmly circle his hand around my wrist. I glanced at the screen. He was already at the end of page two.

“Let me tell you how this is going to go,” Aomine said. I was too surprised by his audacity to cut him off, and let go when his hand urged me to do so. He turned halfway in his seat to look at me. “He’s only as good as the natural talent he works with. His potential is incomprehensible to you. I’ve just read what you have here. It’s not entirely awful. But you don’t have what he needs. You’ll never deserve that. So he’s going to give you the benefit of the doubt, and you’re going to think you’ve got it easy. But when it’s down the wire, you’re going to fall apart.”

It actually took me a minute to realize he was talking about Kuroko.

_Do you know that from experience?_ I wanted to ask, but I’d been groomed by years of discipline to avoid making a scene so publicly.

“Shut up. Go back to your own table,” I snarled at him, but Aomine only shrugged and gave me a wan sigh.

“I’m just trying to be the voice of reason. Consider it a heads-up. The situation won’t change.”

He tried to move past me. I caught him by the arm. “He has nothing to do with this. I don’t need him.” I knew at the bottom of my heart that it was probably a lie, considering. But I was very good at posturing.

“Let go of me.” Aomine wrenched his arm away, and our confrontation only drew confused glances from the other patrons for a moment before more pressing matters claimed their attention. As he smoothed out his stupid plaid blazer, he laughed. “You don’t have the talent, anyway.”

I’d never expected trash talking to follow me into the sphere of fiction writing. Usually I was on the sidelines to be amused or baffled by talk like that; at least I had been since I abandoned my own hopes of a sporting life in high school. The way everyone talked about the Generation of Miracles, though, they seemed to have brought an almost rabid thirst for victory to the seemingly self-gratifying realm of artistic endeavor.

Aomine was just keeping the home fires burning, maybe.

I was too ruffled to do much as we took our respective seats. He faced away from me, this time. Fidgety and useless, I took the opportunity when his cell phone rang to follow him outside. I couldn’t hear the details of his conversation, nor did I want to, but he knew immediately that I was behind him.

“I’ll call you back,” he said, channeling his suspicion through the words as he turned slowly to face me. Once his phone was safely tucked away, he put his hands in his pockets and gave me an appraising once-over. “You know, at first I might have been intimidated by you. Especially when I noticed that he took a liking. But then I read your work. Now I’m just annoyed.”

“Call him by his name.”

“Are you offended?” He smirked and lifted one eyebrow crossly.

“Why did you follow Kuroko here? You were living in California. I’d like to assume he broke away for a reason.”

He chuckled silently and nodded with his eyes closed, the way people only do when they pity you. “I can’t really fault you for not having done your homework, as you’re trying to do it now. That’s the journalist in you, I figure, trying to ferret out the story from the source. Dumbass, I followed him because we were together.”

Before I had a chance to properly react, he was breezing past me. “I have some writing to do, if you’ll excuse me.”

When I walked back inside, Kuroko’s eyes found mine immediately. From his place behind the counter he asked a question silently with the line of his gaze, which wandered pointedly to Aomine and then back to me. I didn’t know how to react. He went about making a drink for someone, and I kept looking at him until it seemed strange to be doing so. I couldn’t reconcile it. He was so _unusual_. Not unpleasant, certainly, but seemingly devoid of character. Lacking completely in self-consciousness. The choice encounters we’d had left me feeling like Kuroko was something of an empty vessel, more of the sort who was waiting for his own inspiration to strike than the vivacious type I always imagined a muse to be. And then to try and put him together with Aomine in my mind… it didn’t make sense. It was like pairing a cat with a canary.

I packed my things into my bag and tossed it over my shoulder. “Are you leaving?” Kuroko asked.

“I’m hungry. I need a burger or something.”

“There’s a place a few doors down,” he said, and with a sigh of resignation I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist the suggestion.

He found me at the greasy independent burger joint about fifteen minutes later, pulling a chair back on the opposite side of my table and taking the seat. I thought I’d gotten used to being surprised by his phantom appearances, but no such luck. I managed to swallow my food without choking, and sighed at him without looking up from the magazine I was reading between bites.

“What’s the matter?”

I lowered the magazine just enough to feel that my sassy retaliatory expression was fully appreciated. “What do you think?”

“I don’t like to presume.” He shrugged. I had to admit, I rolled easily with what I was picking out as his conversational habits.    

“Did you leave work early to talk me down off a ledge or something?” I changed the subject abruptly, tearing off a chunk of hamburger and chewing at him.

“No. This is my lunch break. Is it Aomine?”

I finished swallowing and barked, “Of course it’s that guy!”

“You should calm down.”

He was right, of course. I took a bracing breath and rolled the tension out of my shoulders as best I could before going on. I’d forgotten about the magazine. “He’s really getting to me, and he seems to think this is his territory or something.” Was I talking about the coffeehouse, or something more? I looked away from Kuroko’s eyes before I thought about it too much.

“Aomine used to be different. When we started out, we all were.”

I didn’t really want to hear about it. I looked at Kuroko and pretended to be taking my time with eating. He didn’t seem like an artistic type; but then, he didn’t seem like any type at all. He dressed plainly, kept his shaggy hair unpretentiously styled, and if it weren’t for his saucer-sized eyes I couldn’t have remembered anything particularly memorable about his face. He was _pleasant_ , but he wasn’t my first draft pick for creative _raison d’etre_ of the year. To be perfectly blunt about it, he also seemed a few levels beneath Aomine in the looks department. For a guy so obviously concerned with the superficial, I was suspicious of the suggestion that he had been dating down, so to speak. The suspicion turned to indignation. He’d been right, in a way. I was offended. I rooted for the little guy, I wrote biased histories about the underdogs, and I didn’t like the idea that Aomine had been interested in Kuroko strictly for personal gain.

“I want to be better than him,” I muttered angrily.

“At writing?”

My brow knitted fiercely as I caught Kuroko’s eyes. Something made my breath go short for a split-second, and I chalked it up to too much caffeine. “Yeah, of course.”

“You’re nowhere near good enough to think about that yet.”

I was stunned to silence, not even comfortable enough to start on my second burger as I went over what could possibly be said in reaction to that. “Well, I’m going to—“

“I’ll do it.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’ll help you get there.”

I tore into the wrapper and leaned back in my chair, watching him and then watching the wall as a minute or two passed in pensive silence. At one point Kuroko pulled out his phone and checked his messages. “Hm,” he said blithely, “Kise’s on the way.”

I didn’t pay attention. “Is this because you want to get back at your ex-boyfriend?”

He blinked at me, and sat the phone face down on the table to give me his full attention. “I don’t have anything to get back at him about. I left him on my own terms.”

I’d almost been hoping to hear some denial that they’d ever been together. The confirmation made my ears burn just a little, and I knew something was utterly wrong with this beyond work and writing and any aspirations for the future. Of course, being who I was, I’d just bottle it inside and wrestle with it a bit longer, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t feeling anything more than casual curiosity toward this skinny little coffee jockey.

“Um, erm… okay…” So eloquent. Way to go, Kagami Taiga, winner of the Northeastern Sportswriters Association’s Outstanding Historian award for three consecutive years. “I have to know, were you part of the team? Creatively, I mean?”

“Sometimes. I love writing. But I guess I’m not very good. Ideas, though… ideas are my specialty.”

“Obviously.”  

He shifted the subject abruptly. “Are you really going to eat all that?”

“What’s it to you!?” I couldn’t believe how affronted I sounded, pulling my two remaining hamburgers close to protect them. “I’ve always had a big appetite and a fast metabolism.”

“I’m just surprised that—“ He never had a chance to finish the statement, not that I was overly concerned. The door to the diner flew open and a voice cut through the air.

“Kurokocchi!”

I was facing the door, so it was easy for me to see the figure approaching us at top speed from the entrance. I knew the face immediately, but was unable to form a coherent thought before he was running up and throwing himself at Kuroko. Locked in a sudden and uninvited embrace, Kuroko seemed largely unaffected, just surrendered to it as the newcomer grinned and nuzzled him like a pet. “You were quick.”

“Kurokocchi, I went into the café but Aominecchi said you were over here! Then he threw a cup lid at me and told me to leave.”

I held the hamburger an inch or two from my mouth and blinked several times. It was surreal. I’d known this face for years; everyone had. He’d grown up on television, from the chubby-faced youngster on a couple of schmaltzy sitcoms to the platinum-haired heartthrob playing everyone’s favorite teen soldier of fortune. I’d resisted the show as long as I could, but one boring Saturday I finally caught a few reruns in a marathon and had been hooked on _Travelers_ ever since.

I’d been far too concerned with Aomine’s name to pay much attention to the meat of the articles concerning the Generation of Miracles. If I’d been more attentive I would have realized that Kise Ryota was mentioned with just as much frequency.

“Aomine is mad at you.”

Kise shoved himself into the chair next to Kuroko and pouted grandly. “Why?”

“When has he ever given a reason?”

“Hm.” He paused for just a moment in thought, and his brown eyes wandered over to me at last. I felt trapped, trying to decide whether to act like a fan or an innocent bystander. “How do you do?” He grinned and turned his attention back to Kuroko for just a moment. “Aominecchi said you’d gone chasing after some asshole. He’s mad at everyone today, it seems.”

My ears got hot and I looked down at the table. I didn’t look up again until I heard Kuroko’s voice. It wasn’t like me to be shy, but I’d spent my fair share of lonely Saturday nights wondering how much better my life would be if I could be with someone who looked like Kise Ryota. Meeting him was awkward, to say the least.

“Kagami, this is Kise. Kise, this is Kagami.”

“Pleased to meet you! What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?” He leaned halfway across the table and chuckled at me. I had to admit, he was quite friendly, even gregarious. I’d imagined that he would travel with a cadre of security, given his level of fame, but he was hanging halfway over the table and kicking one leg up with all the carefree cheerfulness of someone much younger. He held his hand out for me. Trying not to be starstruck, I shook it quickly.

“He’s a writer,” Kuroko filled in the silence when I neglected yet again to speak.

Kise’s attitude turned in an instant, though it would have been hard to see with the naked eye. I could feel it in the way his hand tightened ever-so-slightly, see it in the way his grin changed into a more careful, guarded smile. “Oh, I see,” he said.

“It’s nice to meet you,” I finally managed.

“Likewise.” He smiled affably again, obviously remembering himself, and pulled back to his seat with a quick flick of his blond hair. Next to him, I had to admit how Kuroko looked plain by comparison. Why did I keep comparing him to his old friends, I wondered? Why did I care so much? I just wanted to eat my dinner and get back to work. Maybe I could figure out a workable middle and end to my plotline today. Instead, I could hardly work up the appetite to keep eating. That usually wasn’t a problem. “Kurokocchi, did you get my messages last week?”

While he asked the question, he played with a loose thread on Kuroko’s shirt sleeve. Kise had no concept of personal space, which was a far cry from the stern, unapproachable character he currently played on television. I’d seen his other films, though: besides being almost devastatingly attractive, Kise was a phenomenal actor in any role. He’d already been known to write and direct, as well. In fact, it seemed there was little he couldn’t do. People talked about how he was only going to get better, the more experienced he got. Though hardly a luminary in his field like Aomine or Akashi Seijurou, Kise was something none of the other members of the Generation of Miracles seemed to be: well-liked. Not to mention, I already knew about him. He was a good poster boy for his contemporaries, lending the whole set credibility to laymen like me.   

“I did.”

Kise gave him two beats to go on, and when he didn’t a whine followed. “And?”

“I can’t.”

“I’ll pay for your plane ticket! I’ll give you a room! Just think about it!”

I made myself stop listening, trying to distance myself from what was obviously a private conversation while I forced myself to eat the rest of my meal. Part of my motivation, I knew, despite my continued lack of appetite, was to prove to Kuroko that I could. I tuned the voices out somehow, choosing instead to check my phone and confirm my utter lack of a social life while they went on.

Finally, Kise left, tossing me a spirited goodbye and stating that he would be back to hassle them both again before he went back home.

“What was that all about?” I asked, trying to seem nothing but casually interested. I didn’t really want to be blind-sided by more unbelievable twists.

Kuroko sighed. “Kise’s visiting from Los Angeles. He’s trying to get me to move back with him.”

I let the uneaten half of my last sandwich fall out of my hands and onto my tray. Shaking my head without a word, I stood up and walked to deposit my garbage. I considered taking my bag and leaving without another word. Instead, I was going to give my reeling mind one last chance to be put back on its tracks. “Listen,” I began, pinching the bridge of my nose as I walked back up to the table where Kuroko sat in abject silence. “If this is some elaborate joke, I really need to know. I’ll find somewhere else to go. But this is just too unbelievable. Since I’ve only just met you, I’m not really all that concerned with hurting your feelings. So I’ll put it this way: you’re unremarkable. You even told me you’re not that good. Yet, everyone’s on your dick like their lives depend on it. You’ve dated famous guys. Even more famous guys are asking you to move in with them. Yet you’re coming up to me, attaching yourself. I’m not going to deny it: I’m good. I’m damn good at what I do, and I’m going to prove it. But you don’t know me. You don’t know that. So level with me, and tell me I’m not being fucked with.”

He listened without looking away, seemingly without even batting an eye. When I stopped talking and eased off of my palpable irritation, Kuroko took a deep breath. I expected a flowery speech of some sort, but all he offered me was: “You’re not.”

I grabbed my drink, which had come with the burgers so I couldn’t resist it despite all the coffee already in my system, and chewed on the straw. With a resolute nod, I decided to believe him. “Okay. Cool. So what time do you get off of work?”

“You have about three more hours to write while I’m there. We should go back.”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean, is there any way I might be able to get to know you better without your weird friends interrupting all the time?” My mouth certainly did not want to form the next words. “Like… maybe we could… you know…”

“Kagami, I’ll go out with you.”

“That’s not what I meant!” I was perhaps a little too defensive, rearing back as I cried out in response. But Kuroko, as usual, seemed unfazed by what a more self-conscious person would take a personal slight. “I just mean, if you’re going to be helping me with this, I might as well get to know you. You know? And you need to know me. I need to tell you what the story’s about. That’s all.”

That wasn’t all. But it was all that needed to be touched on currently.       

“Kagami, you’re blushing.”

“I am not! I’m going back to Rainbow’s End! I’ll… I’ll see you there!” I stormed out as indignantly as I could, heart racing on the fact that I’d just come within inches of asking someone out for the first time in well over a year, only to staunchly deny that I’d even been toeing the line of such an overture. Again, way to go.

I walked in and Aomine watched me impassively as I stalked past his table. “You’re blushing,” he said.

“It’s just cold out!” I barked, and slumped into my seat.

He turned halfway in his chair for a few moments, and I only looked up long enough to catch his expression in my periphery. Something about the way he smirked was less aggressive than any look he’d given me yet. I wondered what the hell that was all about, and of course I didn’t notice when Kuroko came back in to finish his shift.

The next three hours were comprised of my brain riding alternating currents of overflowing energy to make a plot out of what I had, and being completely unsure of what I was going to do once Kuroko was off work.   


	5. I Like Talking to You

I was bound and determined to watch the counter when Kuroko’s shift ended at 9:00. I wanted to witness his every move, follow him with my eyes, and absolutely prevent him from becoming a conjuring trick yet again. Then, I blinked. Distracted for even a few moments by the fact that I then nearly knocked my coffee over with my hand, I was expectedly disarmed by his appearance at my side, so much so that I cried “Damnit!” when he surprised me with his relatively cheerful greeting.

“Is something the matter?”

“You need to stop sneaking up on me.”

“I don’t sneak up on you. People just don’t notice me, is all.”

My first instinct was to bark that I _did_ notice him, but I didn’t want all the complications of nervousness that would come along with it. “Did you do this to your friends in school?”

“Yes, quite often. I never meant any harm by it.”

“Maybe you should have. You could have gotten away with some great practical jokes.” I sighed and looked at him, standing nearby with a backpack over one shoulder, hand in the pocket of his dark jeans and hair sticking up oddly from where he’d obviously pulled his barista apron off in a hurry. “Let me see your hands.”

“Why?” He held them out, nonetheless. I made a big show of touching them lightly to inspect his fingers, noting with no small amount of interest how small and delicate his hands seemed, how soft they felt to the touch. “What are you looking at?”

“Just checking to make sure you don’t have a strange gold ring with an elvish inscription.”

“If I was wearing it, I’d still be invisible,” he said matter-of-factly.

I paused with Kuroko’s hands still in mine and looked up at him. It was the first moment I ever wanted to blurt out “I love you” to anyone I’d known for so short a time, especially considering that most of the crowd I ran with back home wouldn’t know a Tolkien joke if it bit them on the lazy ass.

He pulled his hands away, very nearly bashful in his movements, and glanced over at the door. “Are you ready to go?”

It took me about a minute and a half to be, and even then I only just remembered to turn off my laptop before shoving it into my bag. Kuroko was already walking toward the door when I followed him.

“Where are we going?” He asked after throwing a quick goodbye at the other shop staff still manning the bar. We were on the other side of the door, it was dark outside, and I realized I’d managed to avoid thinking about it so long that it had become a problem.

“Oh, shit. Usually I’d go to a coffee shop.”

“Yeah, I’m sort of burnt out on coffee shops, considering.”

I pulled a face at him and knitted my brow in frustration. I was about to suggest a burger or something, but we’d already done that earlier in the day as well. I didn’t want to mention dinner. That seemed too much like a date. Without thinking, I blurted out what my impatient mind kept pushing to the forefront: “Well, my apartment’s just around the corner, we could go there to talk!”

Kuroko looked at me, baffled in his own completely pokerfaced way. My mind confused the reason for his puzzlement, and I started stumbling over words to explain myself. “I mean, we’re just going to hang out and talk, so why should we spend money? I’ve got my books there and stuff, too, so if we want to talk about writing…” More than anything I just wanted to cut to the chase and say I didn’t plan on trying to coerce him into having sex with me, but Kuroko just shrugged and looked from side to side down the street.

“Which way?”

“Um…” I was momentarily unsure, which meant I was overthinking the situation. Finally I pointed right but turned left, and started to lead the way with an embarrassed sigh. “This way.”

Suddenly, I was self-conscious. Simply knowing that he was walking right behind me, or rather that I was _aware_ of him being behind me. Kuroko Testuya, just a lowly barista who happened to be in tight with the entire Generation of Miracles. Or was he? I had yet to know if the others regarded him as highly as the ex-boyfriend and the TV star. Whatever the case, I scrambled to remember whether I’d left any dirty laundry or half-eaten pizzas hanging around the place. I felt the inexplicable pressure to present the best image I could.

Luckily, Kuroko’s standards were low. “I’m surprised,” he said simply as he walked inside my apartment, pausing in the entryway to toe off his shoes.

I tossed my keys on the counter and asked him why.

“I don’t know. I just expected you to be a slob, I suppose.”

I was actually the opposite of offended by this. “Dad was military. I was raised to be neat. You can put your bag anywhere.”

He deposited it on the floor just inside of the living room, and traced a slow circle around the place with his eyes. My entire apartment was just as I’d moved into it, but for the addition of a few key pieces of furniture and the ever-wayward television remote control. It wasn’t hard for me to keep a clean home. As a child I’d learned to despise toys I played with indoors, simply because I was expected to spend even more time tidying up afterwards. I took my energy outdoors, where I spent almost all of my childhood on football fields and basketball courts, riding my bike all over town and country just to get away from the stifling environment at home. However, habits find you whether you like it or not, and even in my adulthood I’d rather drag my laptop down to the nearby cafe rather than risk leaving a single coffee ring on the counter. It’s not so much that I was attentive to cleanliness; I just hated cleaning, so I went out of my way to avoid having to. My one vice was video games, and even in the Spartan landscape of my living room a lone X-Box controller cord twisted and wound its way across the beige carpet from the television to the sofa. Kuroko stepped over the cord to walk to my bookshelf, situating himself to scan the titles as I called him from the kitchen.

“Do you want something to drink?” I asked.

“I’d like some water.”

I retrieved a beer for myself and brought our drinks into the living room. He started talking to me when I was a few steps away. “The assortment is really interesting. You’ve got Hunter S. Thompson, Roald Dahl, and Bob Ryan all right next to each other. Seems like I can’t pin down your style, just looking at this.”

After a swig of beer, I sighed and tried to explain. “Roald Dahl’s my favorite writer of all time. I’d love to be able to write books the way he does, regardless of whether they’re children’s books or not. Bob Ryan’s required reading for a sports writer. I just wish I could write like Thompson.”

Kuroko looked at me, nodded, blinked, and bent down just enough to inspect the next shelf. “And then you have Tolkien and Ray Bradbury and Elizabeth Bear.”

“I like fantasy and sci-fi.” I shrugged.

He turned around, obviously finished with the shelf, and sipped from his glass as he looked at me for longer than I was strictly comfortable with. “You don’t have delusions about genre,” he said, eyes glazing back over with the same vague disinterest that I usually found more unsettling than any piercing stare. “You recognize that writing is good because it’s good, not because you’re of any particular style or focus. That’s probably why you’re branching into fiction.”

“I want to do something different. I’ve written about sports since I was sixteen.” I walked over to the sofa and fell into it, steadying my beer on the armrest.

“And you recognize you’re not the best.”

I laughed into the bottle. “I mean, who is? This is a subjective field.”

I saw the split-second glance he gave me – pointedly – before he answered what had not really been a question. “Aomine thinks there’s such thing as best. And you already said you wanted to be better than him.”

A scowl was on my face immediately. “Yeah, I suppose I did. I just want to be successful enough that I can rub it in his face.”

“How many books have you written?”

“Books? Four.”

Kuroko came over to the sofa but still only stood in front of me, drinking from his glass and watching me with that inexplicable gaze of his. I shifted and cleared my throat and didn’t know whether I wanted him to stop. “Why did you only start getting so annoyed by him after you found out we dated?”

I balked at the question on instinct, screwed my face up into a mess of warring emotions, and pointed up at Kuroko. “I was plenty annoyed by him when I met him!”

“But you thought he was inspiring you. You treated it like a rivalry. You came back. After you found out about me and him, though, you started acting different.”

My eyes bounced from one side of the sofa to the other. I couldn’t decide where to look or what to think about, but I knew I didn’t want to see Kuroko’s big stupid eyes at that moment. Was he being manipulative? I couldn’t tell. It pissed me off that I couldn’t tell. “I don’t fucking know,” I think I was actually talking to myself, at that. “Maybe because after that I felt like… I don’t know! I don’t fucking… I don’t know. You can sit down!”

“Thank you,” he said calmly, and took the empty side of the sofa.

Watching him, I knew exactly what I wanted to express. _Because I didn’t feel special, after that._

“So, your book. Please tell me what it’s about.”

“Well…” I held the bottle between my knees and traced thick lines in the condensation with my thumb. “It’s about these two brothers in Boston, who grow up playing basketball together every single day. And one brother gets really sick when they’re still just in middle school, and the older brother takes care of him and eventually donates a kidney to him so that he can stay alive. Um…” I lost track for a moment. “Then they grow up and the sick brother gets better and better and eventually gets approached to play on the NCAA level but he doesn’t take the opportunity. It’s about all this misunderstanding and shit, like the older brother is really resentful that the younger didn’t take that opportunity after all he did for him, but really it’s that the younger feels too indebted and can’t stand that his brother doesn’t have the same chances, and all this stuff. Growing up. Learning to face the consequences of your choices. Family. That sort of stuff.”

“How does it end?”

“They play basketball together again.”

Kuroko gave a very tiny smile, so soft that I might not have noticed it if I hadn’t been looking.  

It threw me off enough to start me talking unnecessarily. “It’s not a really exciting story or anything, but it’s what it needs to be.”

I could have gone on, but I stopped myself. He didn’t need to know that much yet. I looked over at Kuroko again and only lingered when I saw that he wasn’t watching me. There would be time, I found myself thinking. I’d told him the storyline, but I hadn’t told him what the boldly embellished story was actually _about_. To me.

“That’s all that matters. I’m glad to know.”

He asked me a few more questions. Who the main characters were, who the supporting players were, whether there was an antagonist, a mother character, a father character. He helped me to trim a little fat from the still-imperfect framework, and finally he paused long enough between questions that I knew the subject was about to change.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” He asked.

“I’m gay,” I blurted out simply.

“Oh.” As if it didn’t have any consequence.

“Why are you asking? You’re the one who thought I was asking you out, earlier today!”

I made the mistake of looking at him to be annoyed, and when he put his eyes on me I was helpless to look away. “With the way you reacted, I thought maybe you were straight.”

Suddenly I was unsure of whether to be uncomfortable with the situation or not. “Well, I’m not.” No use in saying anything I didn’t need to be saying.

“And you’re single?”

A pause of suspicious tension preceded my reply. “Yeah.”

“Was it difficult being a sports journalist, then?”  

“What do you mean, like did I pop boners in locker rooms or something?”

Kuroko’s way of being annoyed was almost elegant – just a small tilt of his head, a slight narrowing of his eyes. “No, I mean it must be a very straight environment.”

“Of course it is. But luckily the professionals don’t spend too much time talking about tits and the whole thing is pretty insular for men, no matter what. For what it’s worth, I liked to befriend a few female reporters here and there. They had a harder time of it than I ever did. I have to count my blessings.”

“That’s a conscientious way to look at it.”

“Yeah, I seem like a douchebag at first but I’m actually pretty good at thinking about things.” Silence stretched out. “And for what it’s worth, I did pop a couple of boners in locker rooms. But after a while you just get desensitized to all the really nice asses constantly surrounding you.”

Kuroko may have laughed; I didn’t notice, because I took the opportunity to finish my beer before it warmed to room temperature. I was then distracted when he said, “You don’t seem like a douchebag.”

“Really? Wow, I try to.”

“You’re just abrasive. But I’m a pretty good judge of character. And you seem very kind-hearted.”

To him, it seemed like nothing. But then, everything seemed like nothing, the way Kuroko acted. He looked ahead and finished the water in his glass. Maybe he’d been subconsciously keeping pace with own drinking, or maybe it wasn’t subconscious at all. I might have been blushing again. I wiped at my face as if that would make it go away. “Um, thanks I guess. Did you want something else to drink?”

He stood up. “No, I think I’ll let you get on with your evening. I hate to keep you.”

“It’s really no trouble at all, though.” I kept sitting, and leaned over my knees to seem as uninterested as possible, when in fact I sort of wanted him to stay. “I like talking to you.”

He paused, and this time I was meant to see his smile. He showed it to me blatantly, just a little closed-mouth smile that crinkled his eyes ever-so-slightly and made me realize that I was being a fool for trying to deny that he was cute as hell. Maybe the single beer had loosened me up just enough to own up to some things. “Thank you, Kagami.”

“You don’t have to sound formal around me.” I coughed into my hand and used the opportunity to look away from him before I started getting flustered again.

“I do that out of habit. I’m sure that with time I won’t be so stiff.”

Now, normally I would have made a penis joke out of that. But I wanted to not come off as a total fuckwit from our first unofficial not-date. So I just stood up, shrugged in understanding, and told him I’d show him to the door.

Halfway there, I remembered myself and turned on heel, heading back to the bookshelf with a snap. “Oh, yeah! Hang on just a second!”

I thumbed over the spines of books on the second shelf from the floor, and finally pulled a single volume out. I walked back to the entryway where Kuroko was slipping on his shoes. He blinked over at me in subtle confusion. “Here, you can borrow this. It’s not my best-selling, but it’s my favorite book that I’ve written.” I held out the copy of A Gentleman’s Rivalry: The Packers and the Seahawks _._

“I have it,” he said, at first answering rather coldly in a way that I had no way of recovering from gracefully. Then he added, “I bought all of your books for my e-reader. That’s why I asked how many you’d written. I wanted to make sure I got them all.”

I didn’t know how to react. I nodded and stumbled on a smile, muttered “Oh, cool!” and turned around to put the book back on the empty sideboard in my entryway. “That is… thanks.”

“It’s a refreshing change of pace. I should have them all finished by next week.” He nodded and shifted the backpack over his shoulder.

We stood in awkward silence for a few moments.

“Thanks for coming over,” I said.

“Thanks for having me.”

We paused just long enough that I wasn’t sure which of us was expecting something more to happen. When I was about to cut my losses and just open the door and bid him goodnight, Kuroko stepped up and put his arms around me, standing close enough for the unexpected hug to seem anything but strictly friendly. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” He asked, closer than I’d yet heard his voice. My heartbeat lurched with sudden speed and I forgot how to breathe for a moment. Kuroko drew away. I couldn’t believe a simple hug had done such damage to my senses.

“Yeah, I’ll see you. I might be there in the morning, actually. Maybe I’ll beat Aomine by an hour or two.”

“Aomine won’t be there tomorrow,” Kuroko said breezily, as if the hug had actually energized him and made him slightly mischievous.

“What’s that?”

He nodded. “Kise is in town. Aomine will be busy.”

That was an almost suggestive tone of voice he used, which was the last thing I’d been expecting. One of my eyebrows crept high on my forehead and I pointed at Kuroko, feeling the morbid curiosity start churning in my brain. “But I thought… are they…? I mean, he was talking to you like…”

Kuroko waved my suspicions off. “Kise wants me to move to L.A. He doesn’t want me to move _in_ with him. As for Aomine and Kise…” He glanced aside, shrugged, and I could swear he actually chuckled. “It’s complicated. I don’t think even they know fully what’s going on, there.”

“Okay, so you’ve never slept with Kise Ryouta.” I couldn’t help being so blunt about it; I’d masturbated to the guy before, it was just weird thinking he’d boned Kuroko.

“I haven’t,” he answered simply enough, but it was difficult to ignore the rising irritation in his speech.

“But Aomine has?”

Kuroko checked his watch. “If I were to venture a guess, I’d say Aomine currently is. But yes. Yes, they’ve been known to do that for some time now. Yes.”

“Are you jealous?” I decided to needle him, leaning forward with a shitty little smile and poking at his chest. Kuroko swatted the hand away and sighed.

“No. They make each other happy, in the strange way that Aomine can be happy. That matters to me. Why are you so concerned with who’s sleeping with whom, anyway?”

I pretended to be affronted, drawing back and crossing me arms over my chest. “I’m sorry, maybe you’re well used to the idea of being in close with these guys and how strange it is that you’re all making criss-cross patterns with the relationship chart, but I’m still new to the whole concept.”

“Fair enough.” He looked defeated for an instant. An awkward silence edged its way in for a moment or two, and I seized the opportunity when I felt it.

I closed the distance between us again and scooped Kuroko into a hug of my own. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

It didn’t seem corny until he was well on his way, and I started thinking that maybe he wasn’t so plain and average, after all.  


	6. Not So Fast

“I wrote a poem about you.”

He passed the once-folded sheet of stationery to Kise and let him read it. It was scratched out in Aomine’s hard, angular, tightly-spaced handwriting, the stanzas oddly formed and seemingly scattered on the page in a vaguely discernible order. Kise was used to the scrawl, and read it out loud.

“ _Seized by the urge to wandermove I squeeze through the door of doors and feel the sovereignty of private dominion compel me, crown stuck fast to my head with smoldering sweat._

_I’m alone in here in sweltering solitude sucked ever further in every nerve and every drop of tearing lungs apart for breath into the depth of somewhere I’ve been before that you can never know and you can never follow where I’m me and my and everything is mine in here._

_I’m not tired, I’m not ready, I’m not anything yet except here, and ever furthermore of here._

_It’s my palace and my cathedral and my Taj Mahal I wish I could tell the heavens I’ve made or has been made for me, but I’ve only found it._

_I shout into the depths and my exultations echo and can’t exit off the walls, leading to the landing of somewhere I still haven’t been able to reach._

_It’s endless._

_My beloved Daedalus prison with dizzy crimson walls._

_Someday I’ll follow and reach and run far enough that I’ll stumble right out the other side peek through the front door and then throw it open, rip the whole place apart, destroy and adore it and scream ardor for absolution and weep as I lay spent among the wreckage of the last vestige of beauty in the universe._ ”

Kise finished with a deep rumble of his usual bright voice, and ran his fingers over the words themselves. He half-smiled and cocked his head. Finally he looked back at Aomine. “You wrote a poem about my ass.”

“Correction,” Aomine lifted an authoritative finger into the air from his lazy position further up the bed. “I wrote a poem about fucking your ass.”

“Aominecchi is so romantic,” Kise slid the love letter across the mattress, turned around, and the fine Egyptian cotton sheet pulled away where it had been just barely covering his lap.

“In a way only you can appreciate.”

“Violent, isn’t it?” He didn’t seem put off by it, crawling back over to his bedmate with a sly, slowly darkening look on his face.

Aomine grabbed him with a sudden and unexpectedly lightning-fast movement, pulling Kise into his arms. He took one ear between his teeth and chuckled evilly into it. Four times, it had been, since the sun came up. They’d go twice more before Kise had to turn over the keys to his penthouse suite and catch the flight back to Los Angeles. Shooting schedules made their meetings in between even sweeter than expected.

“It’s violent because sometimes when I’m inside of you, I’m fucking you so hard I wonder if you might break. Like I’ll pulverize you. You get me going so hard.”

“I _like_ you going so hard,” Kise gasped and purred, guiding Aomine’s hand to his stomach, fingers playing together over the come that had already dried there from one of the earlier encounters that afternoon. “You won’t break me.”

“It’s always a challenge, to prove that. To see how far I can go before you tell me to stop. But you never do.”

“More’s the reward for me, then.”

Kise grabbed him by the shoulders and they rolled together until Aomine was on top of him. He preferred to have Kise riding him, but that was how they’d done it the first, second, and third time that day. Twice he’d been facing him, but on the third time Aomine turned him around, kneading and scratching and slapping Kise’s ass as it bounced in his lap. Kise was determined, now, to make his lover work for it.

Aomine paused after the shift in position, and dragged his fingers down the side of Kise’s face in reverent silence. An empty bottle of champagne rolled somewhere on the carpet next to the bed, with the second bottle half-full on the nightstand, their glasses swapped in confusion several times already. Aomine was wordier when he got to drinking. And he was very wordy to begin with. He idolized Hemingway and Joyce, wanted to capture the same disregard for convention in the way he described even the mundane. When faced with Kise, however, naked in bed with his blonde hair fanned beneath him on a wrinkled pillowcase, nothing seemed mundane and no words seemed unconventional enough.

“Fuck, you’re beautiful, you goddamned angel. You remind me of how gold and silver and precious jewels became the currency of mankind just because of how beautiful they were. You’re one of those things, you’re that beautiful. I could give a million reasons why I want you on a pedestal, but then I get you in my arms and all I want to do to you sounds violent. I’m surprised you don’t worry about me. Every single word is like a psychotic criminal plan.”

“Tell me the words.” Kise reached up and rubbed the short hair on Aomine’s head between his fingers as Aomine pulled gently at his single hoop earring.

“Devour. Defile. Ravage. Vitiate.”

“Vitiate, I’ve never heard that before.”

Aomine leaned in with a quiet growl and put his mouth to Kise’s throat, sucking there with a kiss as his teeth scraped the skin. “How about we go back to ‘devour’, then.”

“That sounded almost pedantic, but yes. Please.” Kise began to push at his shoulders and Aomine’s eyes flashed up at him, moving down his body with toying licks and teasing nibbles. He bit firmly into a nipple on his way and Kise cried out on a gracious moan.

Dreams did come true, he reminded himself for not the first time in several months. On his first day of high school he noticed the tall, dark, handsome boy in his third period English class, and might not have given him a second thought if he also hadn’t learned that the same boy was brilliant, impossible, and two ranks ahead of him in class. Aomine was, in fact, their Valedictorian by graduation, with Kise nipping at his heels as a respectfully distanced Salutatorian. For someone who had expected to sail easily through school without a care in the world, Kise had been captivated by the myriad challenges Aomine Daiki presented him. They were friends, but anyone with half a brain (which included their entire inner circle) could feel the palpable romantic tension between the two. Aomine was the only one who seemed blissfully ignorant of the festering attraction on Kise’s part, but that might have been caused by his strange symbiotic love affair with Kuroko Tetsuya. They flirted, they teased one another, and they even found themselves in drunken, fumbling embraces at Akashi’s house parties. But never more than that.  

So Kise Ryouta was crowned Homecoming King, Prom King, and was entered as a joke finalist in the Miss Photogenic election. He would have won, too, if the principal hadn’t intervened. Everyone wondered why he didn’t have a girlfriend. Even after the rumors circulated that he was gay, everyone wondered why he didn’t have a boyfriend.

After all, it was a categorical impossibility that he was lonely.

Somewhere along the line, sitting in hair and makeup on the set of _Travelers_ and contemplating the professional separation from his closest friends and the latest emotionally distant text message from Aomine, Kise decided he didn’t care anymore. That afternoon, he asked one of the script supervisors to his house for drinks. That night, he had sex for the first time since he’d lost his virginity to Aomine Daiki in the most awkward, drunken, seldom-talked-about way possible.

And it felt good. Not the awkward memories, but the whole concept of taking an attractive person to bed.

Within months Kise Ryouta was a different person, and his entire emotional life was on a new course. He was still riding the wave of success that had nothing to do with the Generation of Miracles, juggling his time between work and three potential friends with benefits, when he received the news via Facebook message from Akashi: _Tetsuya broke up with Daiki_.

It took two glasses of wine that night to get up his courage. Kasamatsu called twice; Kise didn’t answer. Finally he sent a simple message with his heart in his throat: _Are you doing all right?_

That weekend he was on a plane to the East Coast. He wasn’t the type to string someone along. He never had been. He could have made Aomine work for it, but he’d been waiting for so long. Besides, he didn’t care anymore. He saw Aomine cry. He felt it. It made all of their emotions roil together and they got drunk and started seething and spitting bile about the whole fucking mess everyone had made of the old inner circle.

_“Kise, do you want to give it a try? You and me. Can we attempt to make at least that work?”_

_“I’m on my own now, Aomine. I really like it. I finally know who I am.”_

_“I know you’re going to think I’m lying, but I’ve always loved you.”_

_“Yeah, I wondered how fucking long it would take you to admit that.”_

It was the best weekend either of them ever had, after Aomine grabbed him and shut him up with a kiss, told him to tell him to stop anytime he wanted, and started to take off their clothes. Kise never told him to stop. Aomine was still on guard to ever hear the word. He still played with it, like it might still be thrown in. As if Kise could decide at any time to stand up, put his shirt on, leave, and never come back. It reminded Kise that he was serious. It was the most serious Aomine had been with anyone, and it was the freest Kise had ever felt. He had earned the right to choose. He had paid for it in years of lonely waiting, pining, foolish _caring_.

One leg over the edge of the bed to keep it from cramping, other leg tossed around Aomine’s back, fingers clutching through short hair as he moved his hips in shallow thrusts into that mouth that spilled such beautiful, violent words.

It was the strangest evolution his mind and heart had ever felt together. Aomine was licking a hard line up the underside of his cock, whispering things against it that Kise could not hear. He was the greatest fuck he’d ever known, the only man to ever pay attention to things that needed tending to and the only man to do things that desperately needed doing. Aomine _went there_. Kise had never been so happy.

And yet he was still on his own. Because Kise had earned that independence, and Aomine knew better than to chase, to coerce, to force any commitment where Kise knew to ask if he ever wanted it. Until then, if tomorrow ever came, he would live for the tributes hidden in prose throughout the tomes of literary masturbation Aomine produced under the influence of their transitory affair.

Were they in love? Kasamatsu had asked. Kise said “maybe,” shrugged and pulled him in for a kiss anyway.

He was free, which was all he ever wanted to be. He was flying with his head in the clouds, with everything he’d ever wanted, with his legs lifting on their own accord and shaking from the force of feeling as Aomine plundered him with his fingers, crooked them in the perfect way, flicked his tongue on Kise’s swollen cockhead just as he rubbed over the bump of his prostate. “Fuck, yes. Christ, yes.”

And then Aomine pulled his fingers out, took his mouth away, and fell over his body with a heavy breath. He smelled like sex. Kise grabbed his face and kissed him angrily, tasting the sweat on his lips. “Motherfucker,” he breathed into him, still panting from the denial of release as his heart thumped out of time.

“Do you want to fuck me?” Aomine asked raggedly, his face still clutched in Kise’s hands.

“What?” It was too much to process at that particular moment.

“I was just sucking your dick and I realized that I really want you to fuck me. And I haven’t ever told you that. Because I didn’t want you to—“

Kise grabbed him by the hair and pulled him into a grand and unapologetically forceful kiss, grinding their mouths together with a growl until he pushed him back in his grip. “God yes, get ready.”

It didn’t last long; nothing so beautiful could have. Aomine grabbed the headboard of the massive hotel room bed and Kise held onto his waist, pushing in a little and then a little more, rolling and coaxing his way inside, cooing in indescribable wonder because it was such a glorious feeling, such a beautiful view, such an existential thrill to lean over and feel his naked chest on Aomine’s back. Deep inside of him, moving, thrusting, losing control while Aomine swore and clenched his fist and shouted Kise’s name, begging him, _begging him._  

He walked to the bathroom with come dripping down his thigh and Kise ordered him to stop. Aomine turned halfway around, scratching his stomach, and Kise held up his hands as if framing the photograph he was storing in his memories. “I don’t want to leave, now.”

“You don’t have to,” Aomine replied, voice slurred just a bit but his intent clear as day.

“Go get cleaned up.” Kise fell back into the pillows, waiting his turn, limbs spread wide on the bed until then.

“Think you’ll ever come to Los Angeles?” Kise nuzzled Aomine’s neck almost an hour later. They smelled like soap, finally clean and almost exhausted. Aomine rubbed a hand over his shoulder where he held him, and smiled.

“I hate California. I hate the West Coast. It’s stifling.”

“Well, I had to try.”

“I hear you asked Tetsu the same thing. Again.”

“I’m still writing my book. I’d appreciate the help,” he chuckled and kissed the hard line of Aomine’s jaw. “But I want Kurokocchi in my city for entirely different reasons, you know that.”

“You want me to be at your beck and call, don’t you?”

“All you do is sleep most of the time, anyway. I’ll give you breaks to write.” They were teasing each other, now. Aomine laughed and pushed at Kise’s face with one hand. Kise did not relent, laughed, and tried to bite one of his fingers. Aomine pulled them away just in time. He teased him, wiggling fingers in front of his face only to jerk away when Kise snapped.

“Your little boyfriend wouldn’t mind?”

Kise sighed loudly, exasperated by the flip treatment of the topic. “Kasamatsu isn’t my boyfriend. And since when do you care?”

“I don’t. I was trying to get you all riled up, because it’s cute.” He rubbed his nose into Kise’s hair and laughed.

“You need to get fucked by someone else when I’m not around, is what you need.”

“Like anyone could ever hold a candle to you.”

“You pull out the strangest antiquated expressions when you talk, sometimes.”

“You say words like ‘antiquated’.”

“Shut up. But staying on topic, I heard you’ve got a crush.”

Aomine pulled Kise up enough to look him in the eye when they kissed. It was a weird quirk but Kise enjoyed the oddly intimate moments where he found them. Besides, Aomine’s arms around him were strong and protective, and the little kiss was tender where his tone of voice certainly was not. “Where the fuck did you hear that?”

“Momoi.” It was always Momoi. “She says you’ve been bitching about some new guy at Rainbow’s End. Some writer.”

Kise poked at his chest and then down to his stomach. Aomine twisted and warned him with a growl. “That doesn’t mean I want to fuck him; what’s wrong with you?” While he pouted, Kise laughed brightly. “Besides, he’s too butch for me. You know I like twinks.”

“Is it the one Kurokocchi was hanging around with? Because he seems to be making a lateral move, there.”

“Shut up.”

Sometimes, it felt like they were back in high school, ribbing each other and barely containing the tension while they talked about who was cute and who was available and who was probably gay. It was almost enough to fool Kise, sometimes, to make him laugh in happy abandon while Aomine shook him in his arms. Then he remembered how it felt to ride him, how it felt to have Aomine smack him on the ass while he was balls-deep inside of it. The echo in his mind of Aomine telling him to come inside of him, to just do it. It was dumb, Kise got suddenly somber to remember. Here he was telling him to go and fuck whomever he wanted, when he hadn’t even worn a condom. It had been too sudden. Too much emotion had been whirling around in his mind. Still, maybe it was fine. Just once. He would have punched a nun in the face, most of his adolescence, for the chance to do it. Plus, it had been such a pretty picture when Aomine was walking to the bathroom door. Come looked good on his skin.

“Why the silence? Is something wrong?”

“Nothing. Just… being carefree is a lot of responsibility, when you think about it.”

“Well, for you it is. You’ve got paparazzi breathing down your neck. I get it.”

“Not just that. Growing up, is all. It’s just… eh, I don’t know what I mean.”

“Hey, don’t get all thoughtful on me now. This has been a great weekend.” Aomine pulled him close and kissed his forehead, his eyelids, and finally his lips. “Besides, we’ll probably end up together anyway.”

Kise couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his lips when he heard Aomine say it. “Do you really think that’s going to happen?”

“Yeah! I mean, someday.” He shrugged. “Someday when the media circus dies down and you want to retire. You’ll call me up and say you’re ready to buy a house out in the mountains, get married, buy a dog. And I’ll say yes, let’s do it. It’s not impossible.”

“Maybe we’ll both retire to the woods and write books together. Like hermits.”

“Hermits with dogs.”

“Okay.” Kise put his arms around Aomine’s shoulders and kissed him deeply. “Okay, that sounds nice. Someday. Someday in the distant future.”

“It’s fine by me; you’re gonna be hot when you get older.”

“Same to you.”

Kise’s hand found his hip somehow, and then wandered into his lap.

“What time does your flight leave?” Aomine asked breathlessly.

“Not until 8:00.”

“That’s perfect.”

Just enough time.


	7. The Yosen Scale

It was a busy day at Rainbow’s End. Though I showed up dutifully at half past ten with my things, I was forced to take a table near the bar until my usual spot cleared away.

Riko, the manager, knew me by name at that point. She was on the short side and her disposition was pleasant, but every now and then I would hear her barking orders to her staff from behind the scenes, proving she was a force to be reckoned with. “Should I run them off?” She asked cheerily and handed over my coffee, which I attempted to pay for before Kuroko noticed I was pulling out my wallet. From the espresso machine, though, he spoke up to say he was covering me, and I gave him a deflated sigh.

“Nah, it’s fine. I’ll wait until they leave. They can’t possibly stay much longer.” Together Riko and I eyed the old white-haired couple at my table.

She added, “They don’t know who you are. Sure you don’t want me to smack ‘em around a little?” She pushed up one sleeve of her cardigan and looked adorably terrifying for a moment.

“Not this time.” I smirked and took up my spot at the uncomfortably small table I’d managed to snag. I was too big for the table, and my assorted gadgets and notebooks made me feel like I was setting up a feast at a tea party. Finally I sat back and crossed one ankle on my knee, taking the opportunity to read through my prior work.

Reading it was strange. I’d put in so many visceral cues and vivid memories of home and growing up, and especially of Himuro, that I felt unnervingly transported by my own words. It was something I didn’t often have to worry about, but then I’d always written in the realm of literal memory. I’d never co-opted that into a fictional narrative. So, reading about the two brothers riding the red line through downtown Boston, talking about who was stronger and who was taller and who would win that afternoon’s street match was cathartic at the same time that it was painful. Like taking tweezers and pulling little strands of happiness from my brain, stretching them out on the page, flattening them and feeling everything as they were laid bare. I sketched his face with words, his mannerisms and the way he talked. I left my own analogue rather plain and unassuming; for good measure, however, I did make the ersatz Kagami Taiga taller than I’d been at 10 years old. Himuro, though… he was right there on the page, and a photograph couldn’t have done him better justice. It didn’t feel right giving him an assumed name. I called him H for the time being.

I hadn’t seen him in over five years.

I had a good hour to arrange my mental building blocks until the old couple finally doddered out of the cafe, at which point I shuffled over with my open laptop balanced in my arms to adopt a more permanent settlement for the coming afternoon.

Kuroko leaned over the counter as I stood up to untangle the cord and plug in. The little table hadn’t been blessed with an outlet and my battery was on its last leg. “Kagami-kun.”

I stopped with the cord in my hands and turned to him. Despite the earlier rush of customers and the relentless pace of his shift, he looked positively exuberant. Something had energized him. I wasn’t sure what it was. “Yeah?”

“I’ll be going to get some lunch. Did you want something?”

Two minutes ago, I hadn’t even felt hungry. At his suggestion, though, my stomach growled. “Yeah, let me get packed up and I’ll—“

“No,” he said firmly, cutting me off. “You stay. You need to work. I’ll bring you back something. Please give me your order.”

I was momentarily awestruck at the fact that someone had just disciplined me. Kuroko, of all people. I blinked in silence a few times, and realized that it felt really good to have another person looking out for me and helping me fight those less responsible instincts. “Okay. Do you have a pen?”

“I’m a barista. I think I can remember it.”

“Good point. Four deluxe burgers and a – no, wait -- two orders of fries.”

“You’re going to have a heart attack.”

“But not yet,” I pointed out, adding with a grin, “I’m a big guy. I can take it.”

Kuroko paused and I saw him take a quick breath, as if I’d caught him off guard with that. “True.”

I quirked one eyebrow in subtle admiration of my own flirtation techniques as Kuroko shuffled off to clock out for his lunch break. In the interim I reveled in the comfort of the larger and more familiar table, arranging my work area to perfection.

On his way past me, Kuroko said, “Kagami-kun, can you step outside with me?”

I chuckled. “I’m supposed to be working.”

“I need to ask you something. Then you’re going right back to it.”

With a sigh, I rose from my table and glanced over at Riko. She caught my eye and gave me a thumbs-up; my things would be well looked-after in what I hoped to be a short absence. “What do you need to know?” I asked. Kuroko led the way, out the door and down the sidewalk a few feet. “Kuroko?”

He waited until we were just past the edifice of the coffeehouse and in front of the next storefront. Then he turned to me. Not expecting the shift, I nearly ran into him. My spirits were high, though; I laughed and reached out to grab him by the shoulders when I did, shaking my head at the scene we must have been making.

The shoulders lifted under my hands when he took in a deep breath, building up what I figure, in retrospect, must have been courage. “I think I want to kiss you.”

I tried not to be too put off by it. In fact, my senses didn’t know what they were doing. Part of me was punching the air in victory, but the other part of me was pulling that part down by the shirt front and asking what the hell it was doing, because I still barely knew this guy. But then, wasn’t that how a great story was supposed to start? “I thought you had something ask me,” I replied, trying to be suave in a teasing sort of way.

“Are you all right with that?” He looked so _stern_ , like everything depended on my answer.

A nervous shrug took over my body and I stuck my bottom lip out in consideration. Trying to seem disinterested, when I was really anything but. I remembered hugging him. It had been long enough since I’d done that; I was suddenly eager as a schoolboy to kiss someone again. Not just someone. _This_ someone. Kuroko. “I mean, it’s unexpected.”

“Is it really, though?”

He was right; of course he was right. We’d been dancing around a sly attraction to one another since we’d met. I put aside all the thoughts of Aomine and Kise and whoever else was in Kuroko’s address book just waiting to roll up to Rainbow’s End on the coattails of fame and critical acclaim. I wasn’t thinking about that.

“Nah, it’s not.”

“So yes, then?”

“You know it’s normally customary to be all romantic about this sort of thing. Kiss first and ask questions later.”

“Kagami, that’s harassment.”

“You take all the romance out of everything,” I muttered.

With that, Kuroko launched up onto his toes and tossed his arms around my shoulders. We were in front of the UPS Store and he drew himself up to his full height in order to land a quick, hurried kiss that fell just off from my mouth.

“Close,” I smirked, heart beating in my throat as I leaned further down to accommodate his efforts. The next kiss was a bit more controlled (and considerably better aimed) but still chaste, still sweet in its own way. I couldn’t help feeling like I’d never gotten something more wrong in my life; it was in fact the most romantic kiss I’d ever known. Guys tended to take the big sporty guy for granted in all my experience, and I rarely was given the courtesy of a sweet, insecure first kiss. Much less in front of a public shop in broad daylight. Much, much less to accommodate someone so absolutely set on the idea that it seemed like he might combust if he didn’t kiss me right there.

I was flattered. I was actually speechless. I swallowed hard when Kuroko pulled away and he patted me on the arm like we’d just completed a business transaction. His eyes skimmed the ground. “Thank you. Get back to work.”

“You didn’t even get to buy me dinner first,” I joked.

“Please stay focused,” he said flatly, and just before he turned to keep walking for the burger joint my heart soared momentarily to see the smile on his lips that he’d obviously been trying to hide.

“Call me,” I joked as he walked away, and finally turned to head back into the shop.

Riko pretended not to be looking at me, but I could see the curiosity wild in her eyes when they did meet mine. Mercifully, she kept her mouth shut so that I wouldn’t be tempted to turn into a stupid infatuated fool. I was left to my own mind in that, and sat down at my laptop with writing the furthest thing from my mind.

While my brainwaves floated around on currents of contentment and excitement, I let attention wander where it would. Kuroko had asked me to stay focused, but it was a process to come down off of that particular high, unexpected as it had been. I found myself smiling privately at the memory of how slight he was, how delicate in my arms. I really wanted to give him another good, long hug, just to experience it beyond the propriety of friendship and feel how we fit together. Sure, I wanted to get to know him and find out what sort of music he liked and what his favorite color was, but I can’t lie about being a physical person. I decided to let my attention focus elsewhere before I started to get too hot under the collar.

The conversation taking place at the counter was a welcome distraction.

“Oh, look, they have that brand of bonbons I was telling you about. They have special edition ones. Look at them!”

“Do you want them?”

“Yes. Here.”

“Five packages?”

“I can’t find these anywhere else! I’ll pay you back.” Though the conversation seems here to be between a child and an exasperated parent, I assure you that both voices belonged undoubtedly to grown men, with the first having a sneering sort of depth full of ennui and arrogance.

“What sort of coffee do you want?” The other sounded vaguely familiar, but no more so that the other dozen voices had over the course of a day spent thinking too much about old friends.

“I don’t like coffee.”

“Tea, then?”

“Eh. I’ll get a pop later. This is boring. I’m going to sit down.”

I resolved to tune out; the conversation had cleansed my palate. Just as I cracked the knuckles of one hand and determined to start writing, though, the entire coffeehouse erupted in a cacophony of music. At first I thought something dreadful had happened, and was ready to dive under my table, duck and cover. But after the initial boom of bass and the awkward adjustment to overwhelming musical vibration, I realized it was the piano in the center of the room. The one I’d sneered at when I first visited a few days ago. My next instinct was to roll my eyes; what rank amateur was now attempting to tickle the ivories to everyone’s annoyance?

Not the case; not the case at all. A grand flourish of scales and arpeggios followed as someone’s fingers danced with intense quickness over the keys from one end of the keyboard to the other. A few loud chords followed and a vaguely recognizable and intricate melody took over. The tempo was perfect; not one note sounded sour. For a good minute or two this kept up, and by the time I was intrigued enough to peek around the corner of the counter to get my eyes on the surprise virtuoso, he had finished playing.

I expected a gentleman in a scarf with a receding hairline and a stately brow, or maybe finely coiffed lady with perfect posture. Instead, sitting at the piano bench was a long-faced, sad-eyed young man with hair to his shoulders, dyed patchy purple and cut into messy layers. He barely reacted to the stunned applause from the assembled patrons and the staff alike, yawning in the wake of his impromptu recital before turning halfway toward the counter and leaning over his knees.

He was tall; he was excessively tall. He hadn’t even stood up yet and I could see from his limbs that he had a few inches on me at least. His build was lanky and everything about him seemed stretched out: eyebrows, nose, neck, back, everything. It gave him an intimidating look that was only tempered by the lazy way he moved.

“Hurry up,” he groused toward the counter. Ah, so he had been having the conversation about candy and coffee with the other voice at the bar. I shook my head and was about to get back to my mandated subject of focus, when my eyes caught a glimpse of the figure walking toward him.

“Pour-overs take a few minutes. Besides, didn’t you want to stick around for that friend of yours or whatever?”

“I changed my mind.” The piano guy fell back on the bench and tossed his arm over his face. He was out of my sight momentarily, but he was the last thing I would have been looking at as my stomach bottomed out and my throat clenched. I felt my heart, which had just been soaring on the easy and uncomplicated feeling of being kissed and being _wanted_ , squeeze up and sputter into a hectic beat.

“What was that, Mendelssohn?”

“I don’t know, I think I just sort of threw it together. A little him, a little Rachmaninoff. And just me.”

Hearing him laugh at piano guy sealed it. It couldn’t just be a case of mistaken identity. My hand went for my shirt front and I felt out the relief of the necklace underneath the fabric, the ring hanging from it. I clutched it. This was the last distraction I needed, and the last person I wanted to see invading the last private hideaway I’d managed to find. I tore my eyes away as he went on saying something, and looked at my document.

_H squinted up at the hoop. He didn’t like coming to the courts so late in the afternoon, when the sun was setting and he couldn’t help being blinded by the glare. Tossing the ball sloppily at the basket, he yelled_

“Kagami-kun.”

It wasn’t that he didn’t surprise me by appearing next to my table; it’s just that I was at my full capacity for shock in that particular moment. I looked up at Kuroko and ignored a bag full of food for perhaps the first time in my life. “Kuroko, listen—“

“You look very pale. Are you all right?”

“Kuroko, there’s something I need to tell you.”

His attention centered on me and he waited without a twitch of suspicion, but I should have known better than to think it would be so easy.

“Taiga?” We were interrupted by the voice that had sounded so familiar before. Kuroko turned around slowly but stayed firmly in place, refusing to move over even a step as he looked back at the figure cautiously approaching my table. “It is you. I thought so.”

Strange, the sort of awkwardness that takes over when two people who never wanted to see each other again are suddenly faced with the public pressure of seeming amicable enough to keep up appearances. I cleared my throat and coughed into my hand before nodding politely.

“Himuro.”


	8. Brothers

Kuroko faded into the background of the scene and I suddenly envied his ability to make himself so inconspicuous. I felt as if a heat lamp had been trained on me, sitting there against the wall in my chair without a companion at the table, faced by the last person I’d expected to see.

The smile Himuro gave me was exactly what I’d expected; thin, controlled, just tempered enough by the thrill of reconnection that it wasn’t a scowl instead. His eyes were even darker than I remembered them being, his face even paler. Not enough years had passed to say the years had been good to him without sounding idiotic, but the years had been good to him. He still looked like the emo kid he’d been turning into when we parted ways, but adulthood does intrinsic wonders for some people.

“What are you up to? I thought you were in Philly.” He had his hands in the pockets of the worn-in o.d. jacket he’d probably picked up at an army surplus store. It was obviously too big on him. His eyes flashed at my laptop with poignant focus for just long enough that I knew he took the hint.

“I’m writing,” I said, and leaned back into my chair. “I moved out of Philly after I finished the Clippers book. Just ended up here. It’s a long story.”

I didn’t want to go into it. Buried in a place of my heart that felt immature and unfair (but yet so satisfying), I maintained that Himuro didn’t deserve to hear any more of my long stories.

“The Clippers book…” He trailed off, looking over to the wall. His hair was combed heavily over one side of his face, reminding me of early Pete Wentz on a good hair day. “I haven’t read it yet.”

“It’s okay, don’t worry about it.” I meant it to be a dismissal of everything; don’t worry about the book, don’t worry about talking to me, don’t worry about trying to act nice. I turned back to my laptop and pretended to hunker down for more work. But Himuro’s hands shot out and I heard his apologetic tone rise to the occasion.

“No, no! I really do want to! I’ve just been super busy. I read the football books. They’re really good, I loved them. It’s just this band thing.”

That band thing. I smiled a tight little smile very similar to his, and leaned up to bid him go on with my eyebrows. That fucking band thing.

He looked momentarily sheepish and I almost put myself back in a past life, feeling sorry that I’d snapped at him, feeling ready to ask him how he was doing and what he was working on and not feel like I wanted to shit all over whatever he was about to tell me. Then I reminded myself that I was still very sore. I half-listened as he pointed toward the piano and went on.

“We’re in town for a gig, actually. It’s nothing huge, but it’s something. It’s at this place called Tic-Tac-Toe tonight. Then Murasakibara needs to get back to the studio. We’ve been fitting in dates when we can, working between his private gigs.”

I had no idea what his professional life revolved around, these days. I knew about the band because I knew his interest in music was half of the reason we’d drifted apart. The reason piles of prep work and hundreds of thousands of words on an unfinished collaboration remained exactly that: unfinished. Apparently he had a band. I wondered if it was the same one I’d heard about from Alex when she went to see them in New York City and came to me gushing about how good they were and that I should see them when I could, before they made it big. “The keyboardist and songwriter is pretty famous already,” she’d called to tell me. “Apparently he’s recorded with everyone from Bruno Mars to Paul Simon, and he’s only twenty!”   

As Himuro went on, I watched and heard him realize slowly that I wasn’t particularly impressed. “We’re probably doing the festival circuit starting in the spring, and then if all the pieces fall into place we’ll be opening for Maroon 5 in their fall tour.”

“Good for you,” I said coolly.

A few seconds passed. He narrowed his eyes at me, though the one was partially obscured by his hair, and let out a heavy breath. “You know you’re not the only one who got hurt. But I still have the fucking decency to be friendly.”

I leaned forward, not wanting to cause a scene and also well aware of how menacing I could sound when I was simply whispering. “Yeah, not calling or writing for an entire year is really fucking friendly, Himuro. You got me.”

“All right, then. I get to stop trying.” He hit a switch inside of his brain, which I’d seen him do before, and suddenly I was staring at a brick wall. No emotions passed over his face as Himuro started to turn away. “I guess I’ll see you around.” 

“Maybe.” A tiny note of insecurity and wistfulness crept into the word, as I remembered the good times and almost choked on them. Why was I still wearing the ring around my neck, if I was going to act so hateful when I finally saw him again? “Himuro!” I suddenly called.

He turned just enough to look at me.

I pulled the chain from under my collar and held it up, letting the ring dangle conspicuously so I was sure he saw it. “Remember this?”

He turned further, toes of one foot pointing at me while he wordlessly mirrored my movements. His chain was longer. Maybe he’d replaced it at some point. Mine was still the cheap beaded metal chain from high school. I felt something I couldn’t define at seeing him smile very faintly, and very genuinely, at that moment. “By the way, you never wrote or called either.”

He had me there. And it was what had kept me from bringing it up for months, to the point that is festered and scabbed over to be ugly the way old wounds sometimes do.

When he saw that I had absolutely no defense for this, he laughed silently and smiled with a shake of his head. “Motherfucker, what are you doing tonight?” He asked, letting the ring fall against his chest again.

We were interrupted and I was extremely grateful. The guy at the piano had managed to stand up, and rather than be given time to stew in the implication that Himuro was intent on reconciling with me I could only gape in distraction at the newcomer as he approached. Though slouched forward slightly, his appearance almost vulture-like, he was easily over 6’5” and probably nearer to seven feet tall. “Let’s go. I want a nap before we play.”

“We have soundcheck in two hours.” Himuro sighed, his attention sufficiently taken away from me. He moved to the counter to pick up his pour-over coffee and threw a hasty glance back at me.

“I want a nap before soundcheck.”

“Come on.” He waved for the tall guy to follow and moved toward the door. “We don’t have time to go back to the hotel.”

“I’ll nap in the car if you drive. Come on, Murochin.” On the way past the piano, he played one more flourish with his free hand. After that, I lost track of their conversation.

I was up immediately, not even taking care to check that someone would watch my things. I flew for the back of the café, straight for the men’s restroom. I didn’t quite know what I needed to do, whether to just throw some cold water on my face or actually get sick, but I knew I wanted to be where no one could see me. I noticed the bag of burgers sitting unattended on a nearby table just as I turned the handle and walked inside.

“Kagami-kun, I’m in here.” I heard Kuroko’s voice before I saw him standing at the sink, facing the mirror and looking back at me through it.

I was stunned enough that I let the door close behind me as he went on to explain: “I was in such a hurry I must have forgotten to lock the door. I’m sorry. I’ll be finished in a minute.”

On the verge of yelling at him once again for scaring me, my urgency ebbed as I heard him sniffle and saw his face looking a bit splotchy just before he covered it with a paper towel again. “Are you all right?”

“It’s nothing.” He lifted his head and sighed strongly. “I got very emotional to see Murasakibara again, that’s all.”

“Mura… sa…” I paused before it hit me. “Oh, you mean the huge guy who was playing the piano, right?” I was so happy that I made the connection, I forestalled the realization that something more was happening with Kuroko.

“That’s him.”

“How do you...” Again, I trailed off. Again, it hit me. This time I was less enthused to connect the dots. “He’s another one of them, right? Murasakibara. I recognize the name now.”

“Of course he is.” Kuroko turned around the lean against the sink and face me. “Kagami-kun, we’re in a public restroom together having this talk. Shouldn’t we go outside?”

“No.” I reached back and pushed in the lock on the door. “No, let’s talk here. I don’t want to go back out.”

“Other people might need to use the restroom.”

“They can wait, or they can use the ladies toilet!” I nearly snarled, and Kuroko seemed amused enough by it that he relaxed. He relaxed, and he started talking.

“Murasakibara is… well, he was… I guess he still is a prodigy, because prodigy just tends to mean that you’re very far ahead of the standard learning curve, and he hasn’t even been able to see the learning curve since he was a kid. He can play the piano, the violin, the guitar, the drums, the bass guitar, the trumpet, and the saxophone. All the varying degrees of excellence, though he’s a certified virtuoso on piano. He only went to school with us for the last semester of high school; otherwise he was home schooled due to his training regimen. He wrote his first symphony at 15, and became friends with Akashi. Akashi brought him into our group. Murasakibara wrote the music for all of his films, and they’re still on fair terms. But I know Murasakibara’s only doing it because it’s Akashi. Otherwise he hates music.”

This gave me a start, and I turned my head in a severe look toward Kuroko, begging him for an explanation of how anyone with such a pedigree could harbor hatred for his art.

He nodded and went on. “Murasakibara plays music because he’s good at it, but he wants to do anything else. He fought with his parents to come to school and graduate with everyone, like a normal kid. He was always unhappy unless he was hanging out at Akashi’s house getting high and watching TV. I never knew what to make of him, but he was always nice to me. And not because he had to be. Murasakibara didn’t need me for anything, but he just _liked_ me. We were friends. When I… that is… when things all fell apart, he was the first to call and ask if I was okay. I don’t know who his new band is, but maybe it’s given him something to enjoy. I mean, I hope so. He seemed to be very friendly with the one he was here with…”

“That’s my brother,” I blurted out before I could check myself.

Kuroko opened his mouth but was unable to say anything. “I’m sorry?”

Quick to realize how strange that sounded, I sighed and shook my head quickly. “That came out wrong. He’s… Himuro is his name, that is. We’re brothers, at least that’s what we call ourselves. We grew up together and our moms weren’t around, but Alex brought us together and we just…” I didn’t want to say anything and sound like a total sap about it, so I just shrugged.

Kuroko figured it out. “You were best friends.”

“Yeah! But I mean, more than that. It’s weird to explain. We made promises to each other that you don’t even make with your best friend. I mean, that’s why we went with brothers. We’re both only children, so we had to look out for each other. It’s really weird.”

“What is?”

I’d been speaking my thoughts without self-editing. Kuroko had caught me at a disadvantage. I sighed and put my weight against the door, feeling my body begin to droop before I could stop it. Fatigued by the tension the unexpected meeting had caused, I slid to the floor and wound up sitting there, head in my hands. “I don’t know, Kuroko. We talked about all these plans, all these ways we were going to work and be together forever. I always admired Himuro so much. He was an artist, he played guitar, and he wrote, too, and I always thought he was _so good_ , you know? I’d go to his house just to watch him draw, or listen to him play. And I’d give him ideas for stuff to draw or songs to write. We’d come up with stories and we just… clicked. We weren’t together, if you know what I mean, but we were closer than that. So when I say I admired him, that’s coming from the bottom of my heart. Like, I wanted him at arm’s-length because I didn’t want him going off and getting better without me right there to soak that up.”

“What happened?” He sensed there was more. Of course there was more.

“He moved away when he graduated, a couple of years before me, but not far. He moved to Boston.” I shot Kuroko a pointed look at this, but kept going. “We kept in contact but then it got less and less. I was focusing more intensely on my writing and Alex was really gunning for me to get some freelance gigs, even while I was a student. Meanwhile, Himuro was doing the standard college thing. Sure, we met on weekends and we worked on ideas. We had this one collaboration…“ I smiled as I got sidetracked, but vowed to keep it short lest Kuroko feel I was being maudlin about the whole thing. “It was amazing. We worked on it all the time, but finally the emails slowed down and the calls started coming less and less. I talked to Himuro once about it, and he told me he needed to go find his own way. I didn’t know what that meant, and kept pestering him about it until he finally started yelling at me about being too good. I was too good, that was his reasoning. My brother decided to cut me off because he thought I was holding back, that he needed to find something he wanted to do, and I needed to go and do my own work. I was mad at him. I was so pissed off. But I kept up the friendship. We got these rings,” I held up my necklace, “as a symbol and said we’d share the spoils of fame and fortune when we made it. But something just went wrong from that point. Distance grew. Without the collaborating to hold us together, it just… it didn’t work anymore. Himuro found music was his calling, which he’s very good at, and I guess I felt bitter. That’s it, I’m bitter. I’m bitter that he doesn’t need me or want me.” I threw my hands up and sighed, resigned to my conclusion.

Kuroko was quiet for a few seconds, and pushed off the sink to step toward me. He was wearing worn-in Skechers and I noticed for the first time how small his feet were. It almost made me smile, but I was too mired in my own self-pity. I reached out and touched his leg when he came close enough, when I felt his hand come down in my hair. “You’re bitter because it’s hard to admit you lost touch with someone because you were both being selfish. That’s all.”

“What?” I looked up but Kuroko quickly pushed down on my head, giving me a heavy-handed reprimand as he did.

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” he said.

I stammered, rubbing the back of my neck and trying to figure out what had just happened. Kuroko had an unexpectedly forceful side, when he wanted to show it. I didn’t know whether to feel honored or unlucky that I received the treatment so often in so short a time of knowing him. “Eh?”

“Please decide whether you still want to be Himuro’s brother. If not, you need to forget about him. You’re writing about him, aren’t you?”

It was no use pretending. Kuroko had read my rough draft chapters and my outline. “Yes. In a way.”

“This is cathartic, then. But you can’t expect to write well about it if you’re also being wishy-washy about how you feel about him now. Besides, it feels weird to call you my boyfriend if you’re going to be hung up on another guy, even if you claim there’s no romantic relationship.”

The hammer swung drastically close to the nail with that one, but he narrowly avoided it. I looked up at Kuroko and was silent for a beat, waiting to see if he would go on. Part of my temper boiled for a second with the urge to tell him to suck a dick about that, considering his relationship with the entire Generation of Miracles, but instead all I could do was smile goofily and ask, “You wanna call me your boyfriend?”

“On one condition.”

“What’s that?” I asked, expecting the worst.

“That we go to that show tonight.”

I hesitated and took the chance to get back on my feet as I stalled for time. “God, I didn’t want to go out tonight…” I muttered, trailing so he knew I wasn’t quite finished. I scratched my head and shrugged. “I guess so. Yeah, we’ll go to a rock concert, whatever.”

“Good,” he said, moving toward me. I wasn’t sure what to do as he came close enough to trap me against the door, and even less sure when he reached in to grab my collar, pulling me down by it just far enough to kiss me. It was a less chaste kiss, this time, but still only a fraction of what I could imagine he was capable of. My mouth watered immediately for something more substantial, and when Kuroko moved close enough that I could put my arm around him, I was struck by a sudden flash of jealous anger. That Aomine had been here, that he’d already claimed this territory. That he’d already done everything with Kuroko that I was suddenly unable to stop thinking about doing. I couldn’t help thinking about it, as our lips moved together. I thought of Aomine in my position, pulling off Kuroko’s shirt, his dark hand contrasted as it roamed the pale skin. My heart beat faster. Was he good in bed? Would I be better? When would I be able to prove it? Why did I keep thinking of him, anyway? Kuroko was the one I was imagining, right? Fingers twisting under the band of his boxer shorts, lowering them slowly…

“Kagami, do you want me to leave?” He whispered against my cheek as we parted.

“What? What do you mean?”

“I mean you’re hard and you might want to stay behind to take care of that.”

I couldn’t deny he was right, and just let my head fall helplessly against his shoulder as I moaned in quiet desperation. “It’s your fault, kissing me like that here.”

“I think it’s Kagami-kun’s fault, not being able to control himself.” He blew softly on my ear when he replied.

“Shut up,” I chuckled, and drew back up to look at him. He was all light hair and big eyes; nothing extraordinary, nothing I’d fill pages about based on first impressions alone. And I liked that. I liked that I was simply _there_ with him, and didn’t feel like I was somehow trying to figure him out, climbing to reach his level in any way. No, the infatuation was sneaking up on me just like he tended to, burrowing in the more he revealed, in tiny glimpses like the flashes of discipline or the fact that he cared enough about his old friend to shed a tear or two.

I liked that he got me. I liked that he didn’t second-guess himself when he was trying to do that. I also wanted to throw him on my bed and take off all of his clothes and see how flexible he was, but not yet. Not quite yet.

“Thanks for talking to me. Thanks for getting my head straight as it’s going to get right now.”

“I like talking to you.”

“Somehow I think you’ve said that before.” I ran my wrist over my mouth and cheeks and smirked at him.

“I’m not very witty. Forgive me.”

I laughed, but stopped abruptly when I felt a knock on the door vibrate my back. I jumped and clapped my hands over my mouth. Kuroko seemed unfazed by the interruption, and pulled the door open immediately. “Kuroko? What the hell, you’ve been on break for an hour and a half.”

I heard the voice of Hyuuga, one of Kuroko’s shift supervisors.

“We’re not very busy.”

“That’s beside the point! Also, I need to piss. Get out of the way.”

“I’m sorry, Hyuuga, but Kagami’s going to stay in the restroom.”

“What?” I heard him ask just as Kuroko let the door click behind him, leaving me alone. I launched at the doorknob and clicked the lock again, mortified. My boner was gone and I had no idea what I would do to recover from the embarrassment.

When I emerged from the restroom I sat on the other side of my table, eating cold burgers and fries while I faced away from the staff at the counter. 


	9. Tic-Tac-Toe

The band was called Floss Static, which made absolutely no sense to me even though I had to admit it looked pretty good on a poster. The venue was a repurposed old theater called Tic-Tac-Toe, still replete with reminders of jazz age architecture and the shells of gilded private boxes, now crawling with hipsters and rockers, smelling of cheap booze and young sweat. The music was already pounding the walls by the time Kuroko met me out front at 9:15p.m. He’d been waylaid when his dog apparently got off of his leash near the subway station and had to be chased down with the help of two other people. He told the story in his own staid way, but I could tell it was the closest Kuroko got to being candid.

“Should we go on in?” He asked, his breath misting slightly in the cold air as he pulled out his wallet. “What’s the cover?”

I leaned down, put a hand on his shoulder, and invited myself to kiss him lightly on the mouth.

“Five dollars,” I said when I straightened up again. Both of us let out our steamy breath then, and I couldn’t believe my heart was beating so fast as I led the way to the door. Acting like a boyfriend. It felt damned good. It felt even better to not feel the monkey on my back that had always ruined such endeavors before.

With our hands stamped and our coats over our arms, we entered in tandem and were immediately halted by the thick crowd of what I could only presume to be fans. The music was loud – overwhelmingly loud in the way that live rock music sometimes takes a bit of jangling around in your brain to sound even slightly intelligible. I recognized the song immediately, but not because of Himuro or Murasakibara or anyone I’d only just met. No, it was a slightly punkier cover of the “I’m Blue” song the 5,6,7,8’s played in _Kill Bill_. At least, that’s what came immediately to my mind. Himuro had always been partial to surf guitar and the song had probably been his suggestion for the setlist. While Kuroko stayed close, I strained over the crowd to catch a glimpse of the stage.

Himuro was on guitar, front and center. I’d told myself to expect it, but it was still a bit of a shock seeing him writhing around with his instrument and wailing into a microphone, sweating under the lights to the thumping energy of a packed house. He’d shed his oversized jacket and was wearing a thin white t-shirt and a pair of well-worn jeans. I wondered if he was wearing shoes or if he’d taken his homage to the next level. I bit back the bitterness and admitted to myself that he looked good. Proud of him, I didn’t have time to be. The mixture of stimuli was too much for introspection. Murasakibara was wielding a bass guitar, which I remembered as one of the numerous instruments Kuroko had rattled off while discussing his old friend’s repertoire. The band was rounded out by a couple of guys I couldn’t be bothered to remember later, on drums and rhythm guitar.

I didn’t normally enjoy punk rock, but the setting and the familiar chords and the fact that I was there with Kuroko, who leaned slightly into me as I examined the front of the house, made everything a bit more enjoyable. It would also be better with the addition of alcohol, I reminded myself.

“Let’s get a drink,” I turned and said to Kuroko just as the song ended and a swell of whooping and applause went up.

He didn’t hear me over the din, and beckoned me closer to repeat myself. When I leaned in to speak closer, I picked up on the notes of shampoo and cologne I’d had only a moment to notice when I kissed him outside. “Let’s get a drink!”

“Okay!” He responded, and I smiled unexpectedly to hear his voice raised.

I couldn’t help it; I kissed him again, and pulled back with a smirking grin. “Now, where’s the bar?” I asked, not expecting nor particularly requiring him to understand me. I looked around and noticed I was tugging as his hand as I wheeled toward what I figured was the bar.

It’s a normal thing, running headlong into someone in a packed bar during a show, but it’s always awkward and it’s sometimes hazardous. I heard a high-pitched yelp and let go of Kuroko’s hand immediately, wincing to right myself against the body I’d just collided with and hoping I hadn’t spilled any expensive drinks in the process.

The yelp was followed by a girlish whine, and I looked down with my immediate and well-practiced response to such circumstances: “Shit, I’m sorry.”

I was big and sometimes unforgivably clumsy; it was easy to run into people, the way I went about life like a bull off its tether. I got to be very adept at apologizing.

A girl with her hair dyed pale pink and pulled into messy braids looked up at me with a dejected face. My first instinct was to ruminate for a moment on the fact that she was beautiful. Then my mind took the requisite half-second to examine her more closely and I noticed the absolutely breathtaking array of piercings above her neck: gauged ears, eyebrows, tragus, anti-tragus, industrials, septum, and spider bites on her lower lip (I was on good terms with a piercer for years; I knew the terms).

“It’s okay.” She said loudly enough, used to talking above bar noise. I saw her sigh. “I’ve just lost my friend.”

“Cool piercings,” I told her, trying to make things a little better.

“Thanks…” She smiled up at me. Was she wearing colored contacts? Were they _red?_ Between the body mods and the pale pink hair, the inverted cross around her neck and the Peter Pan collar on her muted floral dress, she was the walking definition of “soft grunge”. Her eyes flicked over, just to my side, and I saw her do a double-take.

Her face transformed from impassive cool to unbelievable excitement in an instant. “Tetsu-kun!”

I heard Kuroko mumble, but was pushed out of the way before I could ask him to repeat himself. The girl launched herself at him, her ensuing squeal lost in the music as she hugged him with nearly the same intensity Kise had when he found us in the burger joint. I looked on at the scene in awestruck confusion. The crowd parted around us slightly to allow breadth for the reunion.

“Hi, Momoi.” I heard him raise his voice to say. He glanced over at me momentarily, seeming comfortable with (or maybe just resigned to) the attention.

While I wondered if there was a polite way to say “excuse me, your prodigious breasts are getting all over my boyfriend,” the girl named Momoi started going off on some topic I wasn’t ready to decipher in the midst of all the noise. Kuroko nodded a couple of times. She mussed up his hair and I was almost indignant that she’d taken the liberty. I noticed the tattoos on her neck, and the full sleeve of cute animals and what appeared to be magical girl transformations. I wanted to get a closer look but wasn’t prepared to interrupt.

Finally, I got up the nerve to suggest that we all try to find a table or something, but just as I leaned in to say something I felt someone invade my space. Before I could do anything I smelled the sharp warmth of patchouli and felt a warm, soft arm come down on my shoulder. It was Aomine; I knew it without even looking, and wondered with a jolt of near-disgust how I did.

He was right up against me, and when he spoke I smelled the whiskey over the patchouli, lacing his breath. “I didn’t know you two would be here,” he said deeply, right against my ear.

I twisted away from him, and when I finally had an eyeful I noticed that he looked different. Maybe it was the booze, but he seemed much looser than he had at Rainbow’s End the last time I’d seen him. He was dressed for the occasion, too, wearing a thin band t-shirt I didn’t recognize, a patterned bandana around his neck, and the skinniest, yellowest jeans I’d ever seen on another man. Fucking Aomine. Where did he get off?

“You look right at home,” I sneered.

“You know Floss Static?” He looked impressed for a moment, moving past me to grab Momoi by one of her braids. She wheeled around with a snarl and punched him in the arm, shouting “Where did you go!?”

He ignored her as I answered, electing to annoy her further by trying to rest his elbows on her shoulders or cross his arms on her head. The two obviously shared an exaggerated brother-sister relationship.

“I know the lead singer,” I shrugged, not wanting to go into it with Aomine too much. His eyebrows shot up, though, and he adjusted his glasses where they’d been knocked slightly askew by his tousle with Momoi.

“You know Himuro? Damn. I pegged you for a cock-rocker or something, this gives you some points in my book.”

“What do you mean by cock-rocker?”

He laughed and fell into me just a little, pressing his palm against my chest. “Cool it, it’s only derogatory against you. Some cock rock bands are pretty solid. Led Zeppelin, for instance.”

Okay, I had to admit I loved Led Zeppelin. In the moment of deferent silence, Aomine smirked grandly at me. Kuroko took the opportunity to squeeze between us and interrupt. “Can we go find a table? I’d like to hear what everyone is saying.”

Aomine seemed quite enthused by Kuroko’s position, and even took the drunken liberty to put his hands on my date’s hips while he was between us. I tilted my head at him and reached in to grab his wrists, pulling them away in pointed silence. The smile he gave me in return was not difficult to read. I wasn’t sure how uncomfortable it made me.

But, the way drunken people sometimes do, he switched his tack quickly enough. “Let me buy you a drink! Momoi, go with them and get us a table, I’m getting drinks!” He sounded almost… happy. “Let me buy you a drink!” He leaned closer to ask me again.

I wasn’t sure if his tactile closeness was one of those subconscious desires made manifest by the drunken lack of inhibition. I wasn’t sure how it made me feel. “Um. Sure.”

“Fuck yeah, you’ll let me buy you a drink. Whiskey! All around!” He wheeled toward the bar and Kuroko pulled at my hand to bring me along in the quest to find a table.

I didn’t even drink whiskey at bars, but I was actually too polite to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Finally we found ourselves set up just outside of the theater, on a high-walled patio and one of the stone tables there. It was cold but a few torches kept things warm enough. So did Aomine’s penchant for drunken cuddling, as he stepped across the table from one end to another, switching between cradling his head between Momoi’s boobs and leaning against or between me and Kuroko.

“We’ve been friends since kindergarten.” Momoi explained, swirling the Jim Beam in her glass. “I insisted on moving with him, and besides, this gave me an excuse to commute to MIT for some classes.”

“Momoi is working on her Masters in Statistics,” Kuroko advised me. “She graduated with us.”

“How many years have you been in college?” I studied her curiously.

“I was going to Berkeley for three years and I got to accelerate my program based on my credentials.” She waved it off like it was nothing. “I mean, not only am I part of three or four different fellowships, due to being a woman in the field, but I’ve already published a few papers nationally.”

“What’s your thesis on?” I had considered studying statistics at one point, because I’d wanted to be better at predicting the patterns in sports and athletes (believe it or not, there are lucrative jobs for that), but then I realized I sucked at math.

She looked at me steadily and sipped her whiskey. “Do you want to hear the title of my thesis?”

I’d drunk just enough to be fearless. “Sure.”

“A Hierarchical Spherical Radial Quadrature Algorithm for Multilevel GLMMS, GSMMS, and Gene Pathway Analysis.”

“Okay… you…” I toasted the air in front of her and shook my head. “You are much smarter than I am.”

She shrugged. “I try.”

Aomine poked me hard in the arm and I turned to him with a bark of discomfort. He was like a jealous cat gunning for my attention. “What the hell?”

“Do you like the music?”

“Yeah, it’s good.”

He lost track of what he’d even asked, and instead put his arm around me, the other around Kuroko, and pulled us both in for a hug. “Oh my god, I’m just so happy for you guys!”

“What is going on,” I deadpanned, nearly horrified by the outburst.

“No, I mean it! I’m just so happy. I want you guys to be happy! This guy…” He pulled Kuroko in closer and I heard him murmur ‘ow’ as Aomine shook him. “This guy deserves to be happy! This guy is awesome and I don’t care what anyone says because he’s the greatest! Man…”

He rested his head on my shoulder. I’d gotten used to the closeness at that point. More than I’d wanted to, frankly. “Okay, I’m not sure if you’re just genuinely a loving drunk or if you’re dealing with some regret over blowing your chance with him.”

Momoi coughed and nearly choked into her whiskey, holding only barely onto a laugh.

Aomine moved his mouth almost on my neck to reply with grumbling sarcasm. “Yeah, I lament my state of affairs every day, fucking TV stars and all. Where did I go wrong?”

“Aomine, I’m almost offended.” Kuroko mumbled.

“He’s an ass.” Momoi reached across the table to grab Kuroko’s hand. She sighed and flipped her bangs as she turned to snap at Aomine. “You’re fucking one TV star, stop using the royal plural when it’s not applicable.”

Aomine chuckled. I expected him to move, but he didn’t. He was nearly deadweight against me, and his hand had found my back. “Sorry,” he said for everyone, though I might have been the only one to hear it. While his fingers kneaded my back, he growled in not an angry way. “If I were Kuroko I wouldn’t be offended at all, getting to fuck you.”

Awkwardness spiked. “We’re not—“ I finally shoved him away.

“Oh come on.” He caught my eyes with a heavy glare just before he fell into his crossed arms on the table. He was, in a word, wasted. I had to take everything he said with a grain of salt. “He’s going to fuck you. It’s Kuroko. He was on me like a barnacle after our first date. You’ve been dating for how long?”

“How did you know we were dating?” I gritted my teeth and tried to keep my cool. Too much was going on, too much was being said between the lines.

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this conversation,” Kuroko muttered.

“It’s very obvious you’re dating,” Momoi offered, shrugging with an apologetic look on her face. “I’ve only just met you, Kagami, and the way you look at him says it all.”

“We’ve been dating for a couple of days!” I blurted out. “But—“

Aomine interrupted me again, turning to face Kuroko this time and pointing strongly at him. “Kuroko, don’t pressure him. You can come on very strong. He’s a fragile soul, he’ll need time.”

“Aomine-kun, you’re very drunk. I’m going to remind you of everything you’ve said.”

“On that note!” He ignored Kuroko and snapped his fingers, pointing in the air this time. “If you two ever asked me to join in, I would _not_ say no.”

“Oh, fucking hell,” Momoi groused, pinching her nose just under the bridge piercing there. She extended a palm to me. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, he absolutely can’t handle his liquor. I’ve only had time for two drinks and it looks like I already need to take his ass home.”

I was still too mortified to look at either of the two other men at the table, and kept my eyes on Momoi even as Aomine slurred his retort. “I can ride myself home.”

She barked at him, reaching over to slap him on the head. “I am not letting you bike home drunk on PBR and cheap whiskey, you cock! And stop being a perv to people you don’t know!”

“I know Kagami, Kagami and I are tight.” He held up a hand and crossed his fingers. Those fingers were apparently supposed to represent the two of us. Then he added a third. “And Kuroko. We’re tight as a twelve year old. I can’t… I can’t cross three fingers.” He gave it up and fell into his arms again.

“Okay, I’ll pay the tab.” She surrendered with a groan, got up from the table and pointed at me. “Keep him from doing anything stupid while I’m gone, and I’m sorry if he makes an ass of himself. It’s nothing to do with you. I’ll be right back.”

Once she was out of earshot, the music died and the applause went on long enough to suggest that I’d missed the last song of the set. “Awww,” Aomine groaned without looking up. “Are they finished?”

“I guess so,” Kuroko answered for me. I was trying to pretend I wasn’t there.

“Oi, Kagami.” Aomine tugged on the sleeve of my shirt. I hazarded a look down.

Maybe it was my own brain feeling the effects of a drink and a half, but I felt an uncomfortable ball in my throat when I realized that I found him almost exasperatingly attractive. I had to look past him and at Kuroko just to cleanse my palate of that unwelcome taste. “Jesus Christ, what?”  

“Did you hit that? Himuro, I mean. Did you hit that?”

“Himuro isn’t gay,” I said strongly, one uncomfortable feeling supplanted by another.

“Bullshit!” He laughed and shouted. “Bullshiiiittttttt. Avoiding the question. I’d hit that. God, I’d hit that. If you’re here to meet up with him tell him I’ve got seven inches and a timeshare in Nantucket that says he can call me whenever he wants.”

My brain went momentarily blank. I was getting up before I realized it. Regardless of what Momoi had asked me, I had to get away before I confronted issues with a drunk that he wouldn’t even remember in the morning. “Kuroko, I need to take a piss, please take care of the lush.”

“Don’t cheat on Kuroko on the way to the john!” Aomine shouted after me.

“Try not to suck my boyfriend’s dick while I’m gone!” I shouted back. A few people looked at me curiously. I didn’t really care.


	10. Get the New Guy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm tempted to say this is becoming less of a "Coffeehouse A/U" and more of a "General Hipster A/U". XD
> 
> This is a long chapter, due mostly to the fact that I have a lot of feelings about RE!KagaMuro. A huge shout out of love to everyone who's read and commented. HUGE shout out. <3

_Isn’t it strange, how fast this is moving? Should you regress to a sixteen year old and back off? Should you question everything, wonder why it’s is happening, why he is a superdense star, why the world revolves so dizzyingly in this place, with these people, and with you suddenly and inexplicably at the center? Wonder why he chose you._

_Why did he choose you?_

I really hated that voice. It spoke up in my head and got the better of me at the worst times; usually when I’d been drinking. I hit the door of the bathroom and was relieved to find it empty. I paused for a minute at the entrance, hands on my hips, organizing all my thoughts. Okay, so Aomine Daiki was officially hitting on me, I was being forced to remember the less comfortable memories of my situation with Himuro, and according to a drunk I needed to think fast about what to do when – not if – Kuroko propositioned me. That didn’t bother me, at least. I liked to get the sex out of the way early on, and see if the emotional side fell into place with the proper cultivation. The other way around seemed backwards. Besides, I’d tried that before. To abysmal results. 

My contemplation lasted long enough that another person pushed at the door before I could look casual and move out of the way. He nearly ran into me and my eyes went wide when I knew almost immediately who it was. I’d taken stock of the crowd; there were no other guys over six and a half feet tall.

I wasn’t uncomfortable with being looked down on; meeting NBA and NFL players on the regular had been rather humbling in that regard. But I still liked being bigger than the usual guy on the street. Murasakibara didn’t say excuse me, and he didn’t give me more than a crooked eyebrow over a lazy stare.

I murmured something that didn’t amount to much and shuffled to a urinal, trying not to throw too many looks his way. He was just so _strange_ in his carriage, like he was dragged down by an invisible weight in his hips that made him slink along. I reminded myself that Kuroko was on friendly terms with him, or at least had claimed to be. I wondered, then, why they hadn’t greeted one another at Rainbow’s End.

“You’re here with Kuroko?” He surprised me with the question when he was finished pissing, and looked over at me. Uncomfortably, I paused long enough to tuck my dick back into my pants and avoided eye contact until we were at the sinks.

“I am.” He must have noticed me at the coffeehouse. Or maybe Himuro had tipped him off.

I was leery of his intentions. It would seem I was becoming increasingly protective of Kuroko. Not that he needed it; he seemed to hold his own extremely well, sometimes to the point where, over the whirlwind of the last week or so, I wondered if he even noticed I was there. Lost in his own world, he seemed to systematically avoid or otherwise blot out those who did him any disservice. Maybe I was misdirecting my own purpose in his company, and misinterpreting his separation from the Generation of Miracles. Still, I held on to the possibility that someone, somewhere in this tableau of old friends, was out to play the bad guy.

Far be it from me to stereotype, but Murasakibara was perfect for the part.

“Do you guys want any company? We’re looking to get a few drinks and didn’t want to bother with the bar.”

Well, surprise, surprise. I didn’t particularly welcome the idea, considering my last interaction with Himuro, but I also didn’t want to seem like a tool to someone I’d just met. On top of that, Kuroko deserved some say in the matter.

“Maybe.” I sighed and reached behind my neck to give it a scratch; just a nervous tic to keep my hands busy. “Gotta check with Kuroko. I left him to look after a very drunk Aomine, and he may not be up for more company.” I said it to test his level with the other members of the Generation of Miracles; the others presently at the venue, that is.

“That’s a hazardous thing to do.” He smirked and leaned back slightly. I was actually stunned. The conversation, scant as it was, was going swimmingly.

“Kuroko seems able to fend for himself.” I chuckled.

“I didn’t mean for Kuroko,” Murasakibara said, and moved aside as two guys entered amidst a loud conversation about their dates’ choice of undergarments. He turned for the door with a shrug while I was left to wonder why so many hints were being dropped about my boyfriend’s supposed licentiousness. Murasakibara pushed to exit and I followed. “Where are you guys sitting? I’ll swing by with Himuro in a bit and test the waters.”

“Just outside on the patio. First table you see when you walk out.” I pointed in the vague direction of the patio door and held the pose until I was sure he saw me. He nodded, and then I felt a rush of self-consciousness as he eyed me critically for a few moments.

“Himuro talked a lot about you today,” he said bluntly. I couldn’t help making a small noise of discomfort at the topic. Then, I laughed it off with the first dismissive comment I could think of.

“Yeah, we have something of a history. It’s weird. I also know he can talk a lot. Sorry.”

“It kept me from taking a nap.” Murasakibara, still seeming weirdly lazy despite his on-point conversational skills, turned a sneer into a sniffle and looked around. “Is the kitchen still open? They serve food, right?”

“I’m not sure. I haven’t seen any.”

“Damn. I’m hungry. Any stores around here?”

“I don’t know, I’m new to the area myself.”

My stomach was starting to feel strangely empty despite all the alcohol sloshing around inside it. I could go for a burger or three, and I wondered if Murasakibara would be up for a dip out to procure such rations. Maybe a pancake house or a Perkins after drinks, actually. Food had a tendency to take over my brain, and I thought about it intensely until I noticed him on his phone, obviously replying to a text message.

“I need to go hook up with Himuro, he thinks I disappeared on him. I sort of did. Hey, new guy, I’ll be around soon. Hang tight for me.” He held his hand out, obviously wanting to clap it into one of those strange high-five-slash-handshakes that dudebros relished. His hand was enormous. I told him we weren’t going anywhere, and drifted back into the sea of murmuring people to find my way back to our table.

 _New guy?_  I didn’t remark on it outright, but narrowed my eyes as the thought of it nettled me inexplicably all the way onto the patio.

“Hello, Kagami.” Kuroko was sitting alone at the table where I’d left him, but somehow he had acquired what appeared to be a vanilla milkshake in a cocktail glass.

“Where is everyone? I’m sorry I took so long. How did you get a milkshake?”

“It’s a milkshake with liquor in it.” He looked at the drink and moved the straw up and down in it. His tone sounded almost reverent, like it was the greatest thing he’d ever tasted. “The waitress came out here to pick up all of our empty bottles and glasses and asked what my favorite drink was… I told her… I didn’t know she meant alcoholic drink… and she made me this.”

He offered me the straw. As I leaned in for a sip, he explained, “Momoi took Aomine home. He was very drunk.”

I didn’t even need to comment on what he’d just said; it had been glaringly obvious. I would have forgotten too, anyway. The milkshake was only technically a milkshake. A good half of it seemed to be cake-flavored vodka. “Holy shit,” I said, pulling away and wiping off my mouth. “That is potent.”

“Yes, I think I’m getting tipsy.”

“ _Getting_ tipsy?” He’d been drinking to match me, and I was already well on my way to drunk. Kuroko continued to be a grab bag of surprises.

“Yes. I hope I can drive home.”

I took the opportunity presented by being alone, for however long we might be alone, to drape my arm around him and take comfort in the fact that I was out with someone. He wasn’t nearly as flashy as some of the other patrons, but then again neither was I. “I’ve got you covered, if not.”

“Kagami-kun, you’ve been drinking more than I have.”

“Then we’ll walk. We’ll get a cab. We’ll steal Aomine’s bike. I’ve still got you covered.”

He leaned into me and we shared a moment of welcome closeness in the slowly warming atmosphere of the club. The crowd was thinning out as concert-goers left, and those that remained had been around long enough to work up a good buzz and take the night for whatever it was becoming. I tightened my arm on Kuroko and smiled.

The waitress came out to greet me on her way to another table with a tray of jell-o shots, and asked if Kuroko was enjoying his shake. He nodded a seemingly enthusiastic affirmative, and she beamed. Her eyes twitched over to me, and she asked if I wanted one as well.

“No, thanks, vodka and I—“ I was going to continue with my well-practiced line about my bad break-up with the demon liquor, but then we were interrupted.

“No vodka for him. It makes him sad and then it makes him sick.” A hand came down on my shoulder. I couldn’t quite believe he was taking the liberty.

“Hey, Himuro.”

The waitress, obviously starry-eyed at the sight of the night’s talent descended amongst the common people, snickered nervously, awaiting further instruction. “Just get me a whiskey sour,” Himuro said, and then snapped his fingers to point over at Murasakibara, who was still hovering near the doorway. “For you?”

“A mudslide. And then I’ll get a pina colada, maybe.”

“Hi, Murasakibara-kun,” Kuroko said, looking up at him with the straw still between his lips. “Do you know they have bubble gum martinis?”

“I might try one of those later. But a mudslide for now. Hi, Kuroko.”

“It’s nice to see you again.”

Himuro had removed his hand from my shoulder and we were both watching the scene develop, obviously invested in the outcome of their reunion. Murasakibara just shrugged as he leaned against the wall. “It hasn’t been that long.”

“It’s been a couple of years.”

“Yeah, it’s nice to see you.”

I knew how to read certain social situations, only because I’d been in them. Sometimes an unspoken apology or a confrontation hanging unanswered between two people was palpable. That was obviously the case with the two Miracles currently in my company, their interaction amicable but unresolved. I glanced at Kuroko, but he was too close to catch his eyes in passing. Himuro moved around to the opposite side of the table and gestured at it.

“Mind if we join you?”

I looked to Kuroko and said, “I have no problems, if—“

“It’s up to Kagami-kun whether—“

We’d overlapped one another. Clearing our throats, we both shrugged and waved to our new drinking buddies. Much deeper than that, really, but we weren’t going to press associations at a pleasantly tipsy time like this.

Himuro sat across from me and Murasakibara moved over to fit himself into the scene as well. As they relaxed, I noticed Murasakibara looking around, critically eyeing the few people around. He reached into the pocket of his hoodie. “Think they’d mind if I lit up here? I mean, is this place cool?”

“Well, smoking is illegal inside, but I don’t know if—“

“This isn’t a cigarette.” He interrupted me with a sly smile, leaning forward and holding a fat joint between thumb and forefinger.

Well, that certainly said a lot for the detached ennui that was all over his face, as well as the fact that he seemed constantly hungry. I lifted one eyebrow. “Yeah, they’d have to be really fucking cool to deal with that.”

“Eh.” Murasakibara shrugged. “Depends.” The waitress returned with our drinks (service was incredibly swift; maybe it had to do with the quasi-celebrities at our tables), and Murasakibara got her attention with a little wave. He beckoned her to get closer, and asked, “Are you holding?”

Her eyes lit up at the question. “No, but one of the bartenders always is.” She looked around. “Are you guys hanging out a little while longer? Because once we close up we can hook up with him if you want. We’ll probably just go into the back and chill for a while.”

Somehow, his charm was on fire in the presence of someone to be manipulated. Her trust was absolute. “Aww, dude, I didn’t want to wait that long.”

“Yeah, but you’d better. It sucks. I’ll let you know when we’re shutting down.” She patted him on the shoulder, and took no pains to hide a conspiratorial smile, lingering on it too obviously to be friendly. “The set was amazing, by the way.”

Once she was gone and he had downed a significant portion of his first cocktail, Murasakibara made a coolly triumphant gesture. “And I just scored some free weed. I love touring.”

“You must be happy to be out of the studio, Murasakibara-kun,” Kuroko said, the comment only slightly barbed beneath its pleasant veneer.

“Absolutely.” Murasakibara sighed. “It’s Himuro’s band, really. I make sure everything sounds good and tweak stuff here and there, but for the most part I’m just in this to follow his lead.”

Himuro leaned forward, smiling his usual dour smile. “What he means is, he can’t stand being part of songwriting process so he does the easiest job in the world.”

“Can you blame me? I work my ass off back in L.A.” Murasakibara grabbed the cherry from Kuroko’s milkshake and bit the end of the stem, letting it hang between his lips.

“Ah, you’re in L.A., too?” I found my opportunity to slide into the conversation. Murasakibara only nodded, distracted momentarily by his phone.

A smirk passed over his lips while he read the screen. “Everything okay?” Himuro asked, obviously a bit nettled by his rudeness.

“Yeah, it’s Akashi.” He pulled the phone up to his face and began to type. “He says I need to get up with him about that TV pilot project he was talking about. He still needs a composer, apparently. Balls.” He spoke as he typed, “Give me… some… time… I’m on… the road… winky face.”

I glanced over at Kuroko as he answered the message. He was pretending to be wrapped up in his milkshake, but I could tell that his posture had stiffened slightly. Now, the name Akashi was one I definitely recognized. He was the spiritual and creative leader of the Generation of Miracles, and had supposedly financed several of them on their rise to the top. Murasakibara, born into money but hardly the sort to hold up the associated traditions, had been a family friend. Apparently they were still close. I’d never heard Kuroko mention Akashi. But then, I’d never heard him mention Murasakibara either. That didn’t mean much. The set of his jaw, however, suggested that he wanted to say something to his friend.

I reached over and put my hand gently on his back. Kuroko was surprised out of his reverie, and smiled up at me with a burst of distraction. _I’m fine_ , his expression said, but it didn’t mean I believed him.

“Tell him you’re here with Kuroko. Maybe he’ll get the hint that you’re busy,” I couldn’t help saying. Kuroko sighed next to me. I didn’t know whether I’d said something wrong, but the way Murasakibara rolled his eyes and chuckled silently gave me the first impression from him that I didn’t entirely like. 

He ignored my comment, reading a new text message. “He says he’ll be waiting when I want to finally do something with my life. Rude.” Murasakibara sighed mightily, well aware he held us a captive audience, and leant back in his obviously uncomfortably small chair to respond. “Fuck… you… winky face.”

One thing was certainly true, if my amateur psychoanalysis was at all on point: Murasakibara loved attention. He craved the spotlight even if the hard work wasn’t his cup of tea. The way he pulled us all along on his text message sideshow was proof enough of that. Even stranger, I didn’t mind; he was entertaining, and a natural at keeping all eyes on him. I wondered how the dynamics worked in Floss Static, then; Himuro had always been passive, despite his need to be better than other people. In fact, it was his passive aggressiveness that led to the length of our silence. He seemed at ease with the frontman role, and surely he was the more stereotypical rock star. But I wondered how Murasakibara coped with the fact that Himuro took point on winning over the crowds.

Maybe he didn’t need to worry; everyone looked at him anyway. With purple hair and a build like that, no one couldn’t.

“Oh, that was a quick reply. He wants to know if you’re here.” He finally plucked the cherry off of its stem and pocketed it in his cheek, pointing at Kuroko with the stem. Kuroko, as expected, gave no visible reaction.

“Akashi does?”

“Yup!” I wasn’t sure whether Murasakibara was answering him, dictating his next message, or both.

I felt uncomfortable. Escaping the influence of an egoist like Aomine or a verified celebrity like Kise, even a burn-out genius like Muraskibara… those all seemed to be things Kuroko had a tenacious handle on. When I touched his back again, and moved up to rub his shoulders, I felt a brace of unease knotting his muscles. Akashi Seijuurou was in a different league. His influence, beyond even the fortune and the connections, extended more than I could conceive without knowing him.

“He says get the new guy,” Murasakibara said flatly, the humor in his tone gone. Like he’d meant to stop speaking before he finished reading it; like a secret spilled. I felt the hair on my neck bristle, and looked at him firmly. His eyes flickered at me less than momentarily, then he went back to his phone. “I have no idea what he means.”

_Like hell you don’t._

Underneath the façade of cool that my liquor buzz had given me I was suddenly very uncomfortable, and thank goodness Himuro interrupted. “Mukkun, put your goddamned phone away.”

Murasakibara sneered and sent one last, quick message before he petulantly pocketed his iPhone. Within moments he looked bored. I expected him to say as much moments later, but Himuro took over the conversation.

“Did you enjoy the show?” He asked me.

“I did,” I said with a nod. “Didn’t get to see much of it, though, since we were out here. A little when we walked in. Heard it, though. I like the sound.”

“We’re trying to do sort of an updated ska punk thing. Trying to bring back a SoCal sound, but less obvious, you know?”

I so badly wanted to say _I don’t actually care_ , but I found his enthusiasm for the subject oddly captivating. Just as his enthusiasm had always been. “It sounded really good.”

“Thanks!” He grinned, which was always a thing about Himuro that I appreciated. He was the greatest I’d ever met at taking compliments. His sincerity was obvious and his glee in showing it was infectious. I was powerless to stop it, even as my hand still massaged the tight spot between Kuroko’s shoulders; I smiled too. He went on to talk about the band more, details and plans that I hadn’t asked for but which seemed very important to him.

I was once – and I’d neglected to tell Kuroko this, though maybe my tone at times suggested it – convinced that I was in love with him. And while I hadn’t “hit that”, specifically, to Aomine’s frustration, I had indeed gone as far as I could. I went far enough for it to be awkward between us. I went far enough for lines to be drawn, for the intimacy of our friendship to be compromised, and for me to question why I’d wasted so much time on being hung up on him and why he’d allowed it. I got angry at myself, thinking I should have known he didn’t like me that way. I got angry at him, thinking he should have told me point-blank that he wasn’t gay the first time I kissed him goodnight or the first time I held him on the couch while we watched _Lost_ . But no one could place blame, because blame was equal and yet it was nothing at all.

Silence had been a matter of course, because of pride and because of the other mitigating factors that had driven Himuro and I apart. I touched the outline of the ring beneath my collar and tried to turn it into a scratch at my neck so he wouldn’t see. “I’m really glad you both came out!” He said, the small talk dwindling fast. Between the walls we’d both put up and Murasakibara’s strange text conversation with Akashi, the mood at the table was turning too sour than I could stand for with alcohol in the blood.

“No problem. Hey, do you guys want to go get something to eat, maybe?” Food was always an option. I was still hungry, and a menu and a restaurant would be sufficient for distraction. I glanced over at Murasakibara and made sure that he met my eyes. “You’re still hungry, right?”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to dip out if there’s the promise of getting high in my future.”

I wanted to roll my eyes at the way he’d abandoned me on a whim, but held myself back. Beside me, Kuroko chimed in, “I’m hungry, but I’m tired too. I’d like to go home soon unless we decide to go somewhere. No offense to anyone.”

“None taken,” Himuro and Murasakibara mumbled oddly together.

I sighed, trying to weigh my options. My eyes, having no other comfortable recourse, wandered to Himuro. He looked only nominally put out by our proposed desertion. “Well, I can go get some snacks and bring them back, then I’ll probably just hang out with this guy until the party dies down.”

The party was quite non-existent at that point, but I knew what he meant. I nodded. “Yeah… we’ll probably go on home. I mean… I’ll go home and… I need to take him home.”

Murasakibara had already pulled his phone back out and was tapping away at the screen. Himuro knew it was a lost cause to make the interaction anything less than awkward. “Cool. Well, that was fun.” He laughed humorlessly and stood up, keeping the same tight smile I knew so well from him when things weren’t going his way and he had nothing to be enthusiastic about. “Next time we come through the area we’ll have to plan ahead and arrange meeting up.”

“Yeah, sure…”

“Kagami-kun,” Kuroko leaned against me and turned in to speak close to my ear. “I’m going to the bathroom, I’ll be right back.”

I gave him my full attention. “Okay. I’ll wait for you outside, how’s that?”

“I’ll be back shortly.”

I felt like I hadn’t really looked at him since arriving at the club. Distractions had been everywhere, and even if I’d wanted to it might have looked odd to be studying him so intently in the presence of new acquaintances. Not that he wasn’t a new acquaintance of mine, himself. I started to make a list in my mind, as I caught his eyes and stalled his departure with a quick tug of his hand, of all the things I wanted to know about him. I knew he was cute, and I knew about his almost comically storied affiliation with the Generation of Miracles. Beyond that, however, nothing. His family, his hobbies, things he’d done and things he wanted to do. I didn’t even know what sort of music he liked. Hell, I didn’t even know what sort of books he read. All I had on him was an affinity for vanilla milkshakes and big blue eyes.

He pulled at my hand unexpectedly and leaned in to give me a quick kiss. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

“Well, that’s my cue.” Himuro made a quick move for the door, detained only by Murasakibara with a twenty dollar bill and a small shopping list of items to pick up.

I knew that we would be stopping each other before we said goodnight, and so we shuffled silently for the exit on separate paths through the club.

Himuro got to the door first, and was waiting for me there. “So you’re dating him?”

“No, he just decided to kiss me out of nowhere.” I wasn’t actually in the mood for sarcasm. “Yes. I am.”

“That’s good.” Reality was a strange thing; knowing that deep in your heart you wanted someone to never be happy, because of your own spiteful designs, but then finding a strange medium between that and genuine empathy when the truth came to bear. Conscience kicking in. Himuro’s conscience was still a good one, underneath it all.

We were silent for several seconds. A patron edged between us and through the door. Himuro barely moved, long neck drooping and hair covering the only eye that faced me. “I’m sorry,” he said, so softly that I almost asked him to repeat it.

“So am I.” It would have been a lie to say anything else, though so many other words piled on top of that ’sorry’. “And I didn’t win because you said it first. Neither of us won. We fucked it up.”

He sighed and looked at me, hands in the pockets of his jeans. “It’s weird, I wish I could say I still want to be friends. But…”

“We’re in different places. I don’t think we’re going to get back to where we were.”

Somber truth hit hard, and thank goodness the alcohol dulled it.

While I was still contemplating the moment in solemn awe, Himuro reached up to his neck and started to pull off his necklace. I was confused for a moment about what he was doing, but when I understood I held up a hand to put a stop to it. “No, no don’t do that. What are you doing?”

“We’re not going to be brothers if we don’t even talk to each other. It’s weird that we still wear these things. Obviously we have no investment anymore.”

“That’s actually not true. I’m happy for you. I’m not just saying that, but… understand, it’s really hard to me to not feel bitter about how things ended. But I’m gonna tell you what I’ve been trying to tell myself, and see if you get it:” I dragged a hand down my face and hoped Kuroko would not appear to interrupt us. “We didn’t waste all those years on each other. I was too determined, you were confused, and that’s just the sex part. Beyond that, all that shit we did? All that shit we created? I’d say that’s still quite a powerful ally for us, doing what we’re doing now.”

Hard to read though he was, Himuro smiled. He was still holding his necklace between both hands, with the ring dangling in the middle. “Nah, I get it. I was insecure.”

“But so was I!” I grabbed my chest, hoping he wouldn’t stoop so low as to invalidate my struggle in the whole mess. I was nearly angry. Himuro knew that. We’d both been over this confrontation dozens of times, and I could see all the replays of possible scenarios in his eyes when we looked at each other.

He shook his head slightly. I snorted a frustrated breath out through my nose. Then we both started to laugh.

We were laughing when Himuro stepped forward and put his arms gently around me. That’s it, that’s what it took. All those years, I would have loved the embrace of a brother without all the pretense and unspoken things, leaving conjecture to decide. “Maybe you’re right and we should give up the rings,” I said.

“How about this,” he mentioned, still close. He still smelled like his old house. At least I’d always thought it was the smell of his house. Turns out it was just him. “If you ever decide to wear someone else’s ring, I’ll give up mine.”

My breath caught in my throat, and so did my heart. I was nearly tricked into that phantom memory of years ago when I used to leap internally at any inference that suggested he might care for me on a deeper level. But, despite the years and despite the separation, this really was the deepest level. The knot in my throat went away; the warmth in my heart, like a space had been filled again, did not. “Yeah, that sounds good. I’ll do the same.”

He pulled away finally, and cleared his throat. “Let’s not give anyone the wrong idea.”

“This guy I know wants to treat you to a weekend in the Hamptons and fuck you,” I said in the off-handed way I would have said anything at all back in the day. Himuro threw his head back and laughed.

“Well, I’m flattered.”

“Not if you knew the guy.”

Himuro shrugged, obviously embarrassed even if he pretended not to be. “It comes with the job. I’m getting creepy Facebook adds and Tumblr followers already. I try to keep a distance from the fans, after a while. But yeah… next time we’re around, I’ll hook you up with some backstage passes and we won’t have to fight with the crowd at the bar.” He held out his hand.

I almost did it. I almost blurted out, “I’m writing a book about you.” Because he deserved to know. The whole book was full of vitriol, bitterness and a cache of memories that had no lucid point. He didn’t deserve to pick it up someday down the line, after he’d forgiven me completely and the wounds had scabbed over, just to be reminded of it all over again.

In the moment I shook his outstretched hand and said “Deal!” I decided to scrap the whole plot.  

The title, though; I wanted to keep that. I’d talk to Kuroko about it.


	11. Kitten

I’d taken the bus downtown, used as I was to public transportation. Kuroko had driven; apparently his apartment was on the outskirts of the city and he’d invested in a car. I didn’t know the specifics beyond that, only that he found me outside (taking me by surprise, naturally) and dropped a set of keys into my hand. “I think you’re more fit to drive than I am,” he said, asking if I had a clean record as he led me to the garage firmly by hand. It was odd, still, getting used to him leading me around, but I couldn’t deny that I liked it.

“I do. I’ve never needed to drive much. I’ve lived in metro areas all my life, but I had a KIA when I was travelling. I’ve been in and out of rental cars for most of my career.” He listened with a pleasant smile. Funny, he didn’t seem especially drunk, but then again, neither did I. I was still considering whether I was good enough to drive yet, despite my clean record and my relatively sober feeling. The feeling had been intensified by Himuro’s parting promise, but I knew I was still tipsy enough that I risked failing a breathalyzer.

I was protesting as Kuroko led me to a sleek silver Cadillac and reclaimed the keys just long enough to unlock the passenger side door. I held back the urge to shout at him for daring to drive such a nice car, and channeled that through my misgivings. “I don’t think I should—“

“Please get in the car,” he said, firmly but kindly, as was his way. He pushed the fringe away from his eyes and slid into his seat, closing the door heavily after.

With a sigh, I walked around to the driver’s side and opened the door when I heard it click unlocked from inside. Kuroko looked at me and I glared back at him as I sat down. The seats were leather and extremely comfortable, and no doubt my annoyance at his unexpectedly plush vehicle situation showed on my face. “I’m not going to drive like this.”

Kuroko didn’t answer me. He waited until I closed the door and then reached across the seat, grabbing the front of my shirt and pulling me forward. My heartbeat lurched at the unexpected strength of his grip, the completely stunning power of the kiss that followed.

“Oh,” I muttered when he pulled away. He gave me a few more seconds of silence to collect my thoughts.

“Push the seat back,” Kuroko commanded, already halfway to his knees and twisting out of his hoodie. I reached low on the side of the seat, keeping my eyes on him as his skinny frame climbed over the center console and he pooled himself into my lap, arms around my shoulders, fingers in my hair. His lips found mine again just as I found the latch and the seat slid back on its tracks, leaving Kuroko much more room and manipulate his body against mine.

I didn’t know where to put my hands. I didn’t want to presume anything, even with how passionately Kuroko was grabbing me in every conceivable way above the waist. I just held my arms up at the elbows as if he was staging a holdup and my face was the bounty.

He had very good breath; I could only assume he’d consumed at least three breath mints between the table, the restroom, and our reunion. This, for some reason, made me smile and warm to the attention most. I loathed kissing guys with bad breath. Sometimes it was a disappointing deal-breaker, but otherwise it was very hard to be in the moment.

With Kuroko I actually lost myself for the first time in ages, unconcerned with connections amongst teenage friends and silly college drama. I’d only had a couple of online relationships since starting to travel for writing. A few pointless make-outs at unfamiliar bars had piled on top of those, but nothing had felt so easily satisfying in a long time. I matched his excitement and rose up into the arch of his posture, letting myself come up out of the seat for a moment as I held him close and kissed him. His short fingernails scratched gently on the back of my neck, and my hands wound around his waist, pushing under the hem of his shirt to feel the warmth of his bare skin.

He hummed into my mouth and I realized that, when I stopped to allow myself a few moments to appreciate the experience, I could hear him breathing faster. It was humbling, and foreign as a concept. Kuroko, always collected and seemingly indifferent, losing a tiny bit of his control. He was pushing a hand hard through my hair, tilting my head back as he did to dip his mouth wide open against mine. When he fit his skinny body completely over my lap and bent himself enough to scoot forward, his midsection pressed against my stomach. I guttered breath and, before I knew it, whispered “Stop.”

“What?” He asked me, more emotion apparent in his voice than I’d yet heard.

“We’re in a fucking car; let’s at least make out somewhere less public.”

His back slackened and he slumped on my lap a bit. His face was still adorably flushed as he looked down on me and pulled a face. “I thought you’d be down for this.”

“You thought wrong.” I was mildly indignant, but Kuroko’s subtle smile diffused that possible stumble into my more uptight side. “I’m not really far from here. We can walk.”

“I don’t want to walk,” he said, displaying the first glimpse I’d ever seen of his sometimes childish inflexibility. Sometimes childish, yes, but in someone who was usually so mature, it was almost adorable.

I thought for a few beats and considered the cash in my pocket and what was left over from the tab I’d picked up. “We’ll take a cab. We can kiss in the backseat.”

He agreed with my decision symbolically, whispering his fingers down my cheek before pursing his lips against mine once more.

The taxi ride was interminable. Every time his hands would wander lower than I felt comfortable with in the presence of a cab driver, I’d simply reach down and guide them back to my waist. Kuroko did not seem defeated, however. He followed me happily up the stairs and to my apartment as my keys jangled from my fingers and I tried to figure out which one was the right one. I was too new to the place to know it by touch, and had to really think. I was in front of my door and still trying to unclutter my keys, distracted by the way Kuroko moved up behind me and put his arms softly around my waist, pressing himself against my back. It was the sort of warm touch I liked best.

Finally I pushed the door open, and he stumbled in with me. I heard him laugh and my whole world changed perspective. I rolled against the wall of my entryway and smirked as I pulled him forward by the wrist. “You’ve got a sexy laugh. I want to hear more of it.”   

“Thank you,” he said as he toed out of his shoes and onto the balls of his feet, rising up with a soft moan to kiss me again, my back flat against the wall. My neck went hot immediately and I started to kiss him back as I felt his fingers spread on my chest.

“You’re a good kisser.” My words were almost lost between our lips.

“So is Kagami-kun.”

I chuckled, channeling a bit of tension through it as I felt his hand dragging down the front of my body. “I like you calling me that.”

He didn’t say anything in response, only tilted his head up and waited until I was looking at him, lost in his blue eyes as he put his hand delicately between my legs and rubbed me there. I didn’t move a muscle voluntarily; the whimper I gave him was a completely intrinsic reaction.

“Despite what Aomine said…” He began. I actually felt a jolt of jealous excitement at the mention of his ex-boyfriend’s name. “I’m not going to have sex with you tonight.”

Part of me wept inside at this, but something was undeniably exciting about the way he looked so sweet when sounding so firm.

I chuckled again, swallowing thick as he moved his hand harder. I flattened my palms on his wall behind me and closed my eyes. “That’s okay.” I nodded. He took my breath away when I felt him open his mouth on my neck, directly on my pulse that throbbed to the sensation as he squeezed my cock through my jeans. “Can I see how far you will go?”

Kuroko’s lips twisted into a quick smile against my skin. “I’d like that,” he whispered. 

We moved into the living room and collapsed together onto the sofa. I pulled him into me over the cushions, easily hefting his weight, and got to hear his laughter again for my efforts. I nuzzled him and kissed him and enjoyed his closeness, until finally Kuroko said, “You’re a very tender person.”

I cleared my throat. “I suppose I am.” It felt like a confession.

I expected him to go on, but he didn’t. He looked at me like he was staring at a secret newly exposed, and I saw the Mona Lisa smile rise to his face just before he reached down and pulled the t-shirt over his head.

He was slim and boyish, which I had predicted just by holding him and watching him (rather purposefully) since our first meeting. My hands went to his bare hips and I murmured, “Oh, yes,” as he tossed the shirt onto my floor. The band of his black underwear poked out from the waistline of his jeans, slung low and leaving plenty of room to admire the subtle definition of his abdomen and his cute belly-button.

There was something there I definitely didn’t expect.

Though it was almost low enough on his hip to be hidden by his pants, I saw the ink on his skin. He seemed to know what I was captivated by, glancing down immediately as my fingers went for the spot to pull the soft cotton fabric down enough to see it fully.

Black ink, simple serif typography, lower case, one word: “empire.” Complete with the period at the end.

“We all have one,” he said simply, and I didn’t want to press him for more details. I didn’t let my brain get distracted by what that could mean. I had more important things to worry about.

“I like it.” I turned my palm to his skin and swept it around to circle and cup his ass. Kuroko smiled for me again.

“I’m going to give you a blowjob,” he said. It was the strangest tone of voice; soft, even, undeniable, and so arousing that I nearly let my eyes roll embarrassingly back into my head.

“Okay.” Because I am a champion at articulating myself in the bedroom. Anywhere, really.

He slid back between my legs and arranged me carefully, pushed his hands up under my shirt and found my skin pleasantly warm and quivering with excited breath. He unzipped my pants and I grabbed a pillow we’d knocked onto the floor. I pushed it under my neck and noticed he was watching me when I glanced back down.

“What?” I asked.

“Do you want to watch?”

“Who wouldn’t want to watch?” He seemed pleased by my answer, and something hit the back of my mind like a sparkling little epiphany; was Kuroko trying to coax some poetry out of me? “Sorry I’m not very eloquent at times like this.”

I wondered if Aomine had been. I stopped wondering just as quickly, because I was currently the one getting his dick pulled out by Kuroko’s hand, while other people happened to be passed out drunk somewhere by the grace of a pink-haired goddess.

“You’re brilliant. Just tell me what to do.” He wasn’t placating me; he was honest and visibly enthused to tell me I was selling myself short. His eyes met mine for a moment and I know my cock twitched in his hand when they did.

He stroked me, gently at first, and kept his eyes on me. Little by little he was distracted, and as the grip of his hand tightened his eyes wandered down to what was in it. Kuroko glanced up at me only one more time before he dipped his head lower, my view momentarily obstructed by his messily spiked hair as he fit his lips sweetly around the tip of my cock. The ring of his fingers slid lower down my shaft and his mouth followed. Slowly. Wetly. Fucking beautifully.

I tried to say something but when I opened my mouth I only took in an ugly breath, gasping as he drew back on me suddenly with a fierce suck. The living room filled with the subtle sounds of my labored sighs and the fabric brushing together where he moved. As he got more intense I could hear him, breathing swiftly around me but not even letting up for one moment on his eager work.

“Oh my god…” I finally managed, and reached up to put a hand in his hair. He lifted his head only slightly, moving his tongue hard on the cleft of my cock while he looked up at me. A question was in his eyes. I just nodded. “Don’t stop.”

Before I knew it, and before I could even wonder too much what was going to happen, he had me completely inside of his hot mouth and I was pulling softly at his hair, muscles tensing as I told him, “I’m about to come.”

He sucked harder, head bobbing with quick, ravenous passes as my fingers fisted around the hair between my fingers. I heard him moan. I _felt_ him moan. The sensation was all I needed. My eyes opened wide and then screwed shut as I shot off with terminally satisfying intensity inside of my brand new boyfriend’s mouth.

Immediately a deadweight relief took hold of me, and I felt like I couldn’t move. Not that I didn’t usually feel that way after a stunning orgasm, but it was nice to not feel my mind racing off the tracks on too many thoughts. I smiled and loosened my hands on his hair, and my eyes blinked open lazily to watch Kuroko sit up above me, wiping his wrist on his mouth and licking his lips. He moved the same hand up to his hair and tried to push it into place, turning his head into the movement. My smile turned into a grin and I said the first thing that came to my mind. “You look like a kitten.”

“I what?” He was amused, at least. He knew perfectly well what I’d said, even if I’d mumbled it.

“Like a kitten. You’re like a kitten grooming himself after a bowl of cream.”

“I don’t know if that’s supposed to be a sexy overture.” He leaned down slowly, carefully fitting himself over me, and laid his head over his hands on my chest.

“No, just an observation. You’re cute as hell.” I paused and realized there was something more that needed desperately to be said in the moment. “And you give great head.”

“You turn me on, Kagami-kun,” he whispered matter-of-factly, slinking further up my body, fitting into the cat role more fiendishly. “I like your confidence. And you’re very good looking. You have a great body. I like how we fit together.”

I thought about it for a moment, lost still in the heavy fog of post-orgasmic bliss and swaddled in a blanket of compliments to top it off. His weight on top of me was nothing less than perfect. Despite his almost diminutive stature, Kuroko was more possessed by his hormones than I would have given him credit for upon first glance. He fit neatly into the role I was often expected to fill, by several disappointed former lovers who obviously thought it was the big guy’s job to initiate every move.

Kuroko had, perhaps, not meant his remark so metaphorically. But then again, maybe he had. “In more ways than one.”

“Do you mind if I kiss you?” He asked, already moving toward my mouth.

“As long as you’re not planning to bite my tongue off.” I parted my lips slightly in invitation.

“Why would I do that?” He smirked, and I returned the expression as our lips met. The tang of me was still on his tongue, but our kisses were far too passionate for that to last.

I twisted him and grabbed his waist; feet found the floor and cushions shifted until I’d rolled him over with some effort. Okay, so maybe I was prone to bursts of aggressive initiative. Only when it felt _right._ Kuroko’s face transformed when he wound up beneath me, and his bare chest rose with a strong breath. “I like this,” he said.

“Yeah?” I asked, still unable to shake my love of encouragement. However, I waited for no hints to be dropped before I cupped the stiff bulge in his jeans, palming the ridge I felt there until I could trace the outline of a very hard cock beneath the fabric.

Kuroko was just as vocal as I expected; that is, not very. I returned the favor he’d given me and looked at him, studying his face as I rubbed him hard, calculating his reaction and whether or not my approach was welcome. He didn’t say a word, and barely even offered me a moan. However, when he moved one hand up to throw across his forehead, I saw the color rising in his cheeks and knew I’d made a fantastic choice.

However, I was still not satisfied with his pants being on. Nor was I satisfied with the fact that I was still wearing a shirt, the hem of which was hanging down annoyingly in the path of my handiwork. I growled softly and sat up, wrenching it off. Then, I heard Kuroko moan. Well, it wasn’t a moan, exactly; more of a sigh transformed by the undeniable weight of arousal. It was nevertheless exciting as fuck, and I knew I had to kiss him, to try and breathe in some of the beauty left behind by that sound.

His hands pressed against my pecs as I leaned over him, bending in to kiss him. Left to set the pace of our kisses, I noticed how much gentler I was by nature. Kuroko already had a tendency to attack me head-on, but I tended to only build up to that sort of frenzy. I was quite intent on building up to it then, as I reached down and tried to be as casual as possible about tearing into his jeans.

Kuroko opened his mouth against my kiss and cried out softly when I shoved the pants over his hips, pulling his boxer shorts down with them to catch on his cock before it sprang up hard against my hand. “Fuck,” I breathed into our kiss. Writer or not, my capacity for poetry had reached its logical conclusion.

Though reluctantly, I interrupted our kisses long enough to lick my hand before palming the precome from the tip and proceeding to corkscrew my fist hard and fast over his impressive cock. He cried out once more, and just as softly, but otherwise all I heard were the tiny, frantic gusts from his breath. He couldn’t concentrate on our kisses, and nestled his head into the crook of my shoulder, gasping there, tensing beneath me, digging his fingers into my arms.

“Are you close?” I asked, turning my lips to his ear. He shuddered, whimpered deep inside of his throat, and answered my question immediately as he spurted thickly over my hand and between our stomachs.

I gave him a few moments to let his breath even out and to let his death grip on my biceps fall away. At last he mumbled an exhausted, “Oh,” and sank relaxed into the cushions.

With a grin I sat up and wiped my hand off on my chest. The sight energized Kuroko just enough that he crooked an eyebrow at me. “Thank you,” he said, ever the polite soul.

“You’re the one who swallowed,” I joked, bending down to touch my nose to his, and then kiss him when it seemed like it might be an overly sentimental move.

“Yeah.” He sighed. “I wanted to.”

And that was that. 


	12. The Fairest Branch

“I don’t even know you yet. I feel like I’ve spilled everything, and you’ve told me about your past but not about _you._ ” We made the move to my bedroom after Kuroko slid back into his jeans and confessed how sleepy he was. I offered him a blanket and he accepted, but upon seeing him fluffing the pillow on the sofa I paused in the hallway and asked if he wanted to simply sleep with me. Just sleeping, I assured him, and he thought about it for a few silent beats. He shrugged and joined me, finally.

We were together but separate by a proper body’s width beneath my covers. I don’t know why I erred on the side of caution in inviting him over with a hug or a nuzzle, but I was inordinately proud of my own self-control in doing so.

“What do you want to know?”

“I don’t know, stuff like your living situation, how you spend your time, what you like to do. Getting to know you stuff, I suppose.” I was suddenly gripped by insecurity and re-evaluated my need to pry. “But it’s cool if you don’t want to go into it. I don’t mean to—“

“I live alone,” he interrupted me smoothly. “I got my own apartment recently. Well, okay, I don’t live alone exactly. I live with my dog.”

I bristled. “A dog?”

“Yes.” He sounded notably enthused by the discussion of his pet. Sadly, I was about to burst that bubble whether I wanted to or not.

“Is it a big dog?”

“He’s a puppy right now. But he’ll get big. It’s a Siberian Husky I got from a rescue center.”

“Ah.”

“Is something wrong?”

“I’m scared of dogs,” I mumbled, at the same time embarrassed by the admission and not happy to be turning the discussion back to myself so soon.

He was quiet, and I was even more humiliated, too scared to look over at him as I sighed and told him that I knew it was silly.

“No, there must be a reason. Were you bitten?” It was further than most people got in trying to figure out my weird phobias. I had a few of them. Dogs were the worst. Beetles weren’t much better.

“No!” I answered him loudly and then checked my volume. “It’s just weird. It’s stupid. I’m scared of dogs. They’ve never done anything to me. Let’s move on.” Before he could laugh at me, I shifted the subject. “The coffee shop must pay you pretty well.”

“It doesn’t.”

“Then how can you afford your own apartment and a Cadillac? Rich parents?” Did I want to know the answer?

He paused.  “Akashi.”

If I’d really thought about it, I could have figured it out. Nevertheless, my insecurity spiked at the mention of one of the Generation of Miracles, and I was more barbed than I intended with my reply. “Does he owe you something?”

“A lot of his early success, I suppose.” Wow, that was a tremendous way to put it. I admired his gall and wanted to shower him with kisses just for the ego he showed. Still, I was apprehensive. “Akashi has more money than he knows what to do with. When Aomine and I broke up he asked me where I wanted to live and told me to forward him all the paperwork. He paid for my lease. He bought my car. Akashi doesn’t think anything of spending money. I think it’s the only way he can show emotion, sometimes. When he withholds the money from you, you know you’re out of his favor.”

“What’s he like, anyway?”

Kuroko was quick to respond, and I could hear him shifting under the covers to get more comfortable. “Guarded. I don’t want to put it too simply, but Akashi’s parents weren’t around much while he was growing up. So he just made things up to keep himself occupied. Movies and TV raised him, and I guess that gave him some delusions of what was possible in the real world. Even so, he keeps it inside, mostly. Lives inside of his own head. Akashi gets creatively close to the people he trusts, but his walls are extremely thick. In fact, I don’t think he’s ever called anyone his best friend. He’s definitely never dated.”

“Oh, really?” I didn’t mean to downplay the emotional weight of what he’d explained to me, but this caught me off guard. “So it’s not all as sordid as it seems, you guys and your high school peccadilloes?”

“We didn’t all date each other, Kagami-kun. Aomine and I were together, Kise liked Aomine, now I suppose Kise and Aomine are together, sort of. That’s really it. I think Midorima liked Akashi. But Akashi was… well, I just told you.”

Some people think that men are less likely to buy into gossip culture, but society fails to recognize how closely related celebrity gossip and sports gossip are. Some of the articles and books I wrote, and had the most fun writing, were no better than extended dirty laundry lists. It was just a different environment. And I loved hearing about it. “Midorima. Isn’t he working for Spielberg?”

“He interned on a Spielberg film as a production assistant, and that’s what everyone focuses on. He might be a second unit cinematographer for David Fincher’s next, which he’s far more proud of. That is, if he doesn’t want to focus on his photography instead.”

“I can’t blame him for preferring Fincher.” I suddenly realized what we were discussing. “Look, we’re doing it again! We’re talking about your friends!”

“You’re the one who asked—“

“I know, I know. I keep getting off track, but the fact is: Kuroko, I want to know about you. I just keep on getting caught up on things like that and I’m sorry.”

“I don’t mind.”

With a heavy flop and a flourish of blankets, I turned to face him. “What do you like to do? Like, most of all. In the world.”

“Are you asking what I’d do for a living?”

“Maybe. If you could get paid for it, I suppose. What makes you happy?”

He thought, and turned to face me as well. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness and I could see his features vaguely in grey. “I like to help people. I like feeling I’m helping people.”

“Like, volunteer work? Do you volunteer?”

He shrugged. “I’d like to. But I guess I just like doing what I do. You know, helping people create stuff.”

“Why don’t you do your own thing, though? Write, or draw, or something?”

“I’m not good at it. I’ve told you.”

“But wouldn’t it feel better?”

“Not necessarily,” he said, and I saw him shake his head against the pillow. “The process of creation is tiring. It’s complicated, and it consumes people. Good people need help, but other people who create are really just concerned with what they’re doing, on their own. That’s what I liked about the Generation of Miracles, the way it used to be. We all worked together, and helped each other, and fed on each other’s energy. But then something changed, and everyone started to focus on themselves. That’s the way Akashi liked it, everyone pushing themselves to the limit. But I thought it was more important to be a team, to have fun and be proud of what we were making. Everyone lost sight of the real goal – to make something we could be proud of – and I couldn’t have any part of it.”

“That’s why you left?”

I saw him nodding. There was more to it, and I wasn’t sure that Kuroko was ready to confess the full story. “Aomine and I were living together and he started to completely ignore everyone else. All that mattered was his success, his acclamation, and not the project. In fact, I felt at one point like he forgot about the project altogether. He was supposed to write the script and he treated it like this silly distraction he could work on in his downtime. Akashi put his faith in Aomine, and I gave him all my attention just so we could all be the best, together. And have fun. It used to be fun. It wasn’t anymore. He resented everyone else. I left him.”

“You left him?” I think I’d heard it mentioned that way, but I probably hadn’t been ready to listen.

“I walked out one night and never came back, called Akashi and packed up my things over the next few days. I lived with Riko until I got my new place.”

“She seems nice.” I tried to distract him slightly. I could tell the subject was bringing him down, and that was the last thing I wanted.

“She is. I’m really lucky to work there. It’s hard work, but they’re like my family.”

We were silent, listening to the heater running in the hallway, making a pleasant white noise buzz in the background. I thought maybe we had drifted into the understood calm of post-conversational bedtime sleep.

Not quite, though. “Hey, Kagami-kun?” Kuroko asked.

“Yeah?”

“You have fun writing, don’t you?”

“Sometimes I used to think I didn’t, when it felt more like a job. But then I realized I get to do the coolest job I know. So yeah… I love it. I have fun.”

“You’ve changed your idea, though.”

I was shocked, and sat up a little in bed to look down at him. “How in the hell could you tell that?”

“It’s not difficult. Your whole demeanor has changed. And all you’re really concerned with, if you’re a writer, is an idea. When the idea changes, or the focus of the idea, so do you. I know how to read these things, but it’s hard to explain.”

“That’s really cool. That’s just _crazy_. I’m…” I was tempted to be hyperbolic in my praise, but Kuroko only needed the facts. “You’re so surprising.”

“Do you want to talk about it now?”

“I’m tired right now.” I took the chance to wiggle closer, just until I could feel the heat from his body mere centimeters from mine, and punched my pillow to get comfortable. “Tomorrow? While we’re walking to your car, maybe?”

“Yes, that sounds good.”

“Get some sleep. Let me know if you need anything.”

“Thank you, Kagami-kun.”

“It’s no problem.”

He scooted over the few inches to my face, and placed an uneven kiss on the corner of my mouth. “Goodnight,” he whispered.

“Goodnight,” I breathed back, warmth tickling through me.

~*~

Several days later I was surprised to find myself reading at Rainbow’s End. I was a quick reader, and Kuroko suggested I go on a small consumption binge to fuel the energy before I started to work again in earnest. I’d already packed away two lighter novels, but the third was taking at least twice as long to finish. I was on the last page and didn’t want to put it down. I hated that feeling. I especially hated that feeling considering which book it was.

> _Seeming cold, she tightened her fingers on the fairest branch and leaned in closely. Without words, she accepted the marriage of inevitability and death sentencing all to sunder. Seeming vanquished, she cursed the pilot with her final breath; her regency of Ustria a candle flicker, her agency the space between the ever-beating tread of wheels on worn and battled paths._

I had to stop and think about it. I read it twice, just that paragraph and then the final sentence once more. I finally closed the cover on my copy of The Way of Hurricanes, and quickly turned it over when I noticed there was a photograph of Aomine on the back.

I spent a good few moments just tapping my fingers against my chin, brow furrowed in the sort of way that only extreme thought could manage. So this was the prose that had carried Aomine Daiki from teenage prodigy to A-list author. I wanted to finish the book and claim to have no idea what everyone saw in him, but such was not the case. The story was lucid and tragic, structured lovingly in tiers of action that read like a building storm. All the symbolism of the pacing itself was just obvious enough that I picked up on it, but just subtle enough that it wasn’t forced. The characters were flawed and the point-of-view that swirled between them was as meditative as it was excruciatingly intense. Moreover, his use of words was impeccable. I hated that, more than I hated anything. My laptop was in front of me but I didn’t even want to open it. What was the use? Aomine was an artist. I was simply a smith.

I said as much to Kuroko when he noticed me stewing and came over to see what was the matter.

“He is an artist, yes.” Kuroko didn’t quite make me feel better with that, but I sensed more on the way and so I waited for him to continue. “That’s his strength and his downfall. He gets bored easily when he thinks he isn’t pushing envelopes and changing the game. And that’s not the way to perfect a craft. Being a smith isn’t the way to think about it, you know.”

“Well, what is, then?”

“There are artists, and then there are designers.”

I tilted my head, hoping it would encourage him to elaborate.

“Have you ever heard of Paul Rand?” He asked me. I shook my head. “He wasn’t perfect, but he’s probably the most celebrated graphic designer of the 20th century. He designed logos, mostly. IBM, UPS, Enron. Anyway, he hated postmodernism. He would have thought Aomine’s writing was bullshit.”

“It’s not, though. It’s brilliant.”

“But there are so many ways of writing. You don’t write like Aomine. You don’t even think like that, or live like that. You just read two other books, and two other completely different authors. You don’t think Christopher Moore isn’t brilliant. Or Erik Larson.” I’d picked Moore for the humor, and Larson for the comfort of journalistic writing.

“So?”

“Well, Paul Rand once said ‘do not try to be original; just try to be good.’” He paused only for a moment or two. It looked like he wanted to give me a kiss of encouragement; he did it a lot, when they weren’t very busy. That day, they were. “I need to empty the garbage.” He just patted me on the shoulder and passed by quickly, gesturing affirmatively at Hyuuga’s shouted order that he hurry his ass up.

Originality vs. quality. The definitions of both were so subjective, and that’s where I was failing. I didn’t want to be caught up in the self-doubt associated with always trying to best my own benchmarks, but I also couldn’t possibly set myself up against someone like Aomine.

I pulled my laptop over and pushed the dense book behind it, opening the screen with a determined sigh.

My usual routine had me shutting down my Twitter client and checking my e-mail one last time before I opened up a new document and prayed for inspiration to guide me along. Twitter was being mercifully quiet.

My e-mail, on the other hand, was another matter. Usually it was full of advertisements from sites I’d visited once, publications I subscribed to, and Facebook notifications I kept forgetting to turn off. My eyes were well-trained to pick out the legitimate correspondence from the sea of crap, and so that morning I could hardly wrap my brain around the fact that an actual e-mail from an actual person was sitting there at the top of the list. The subject line was a cryptic one: “In anticipation of future success”.

I would have thought it was junk, if it weren’t for the even more cryptic name in the “From” column.

Akashi Seijuurou.

I took another sip of my coffee, held my breath, and opened it.

> _Kagami Taiga,_
> 
> _I was made aware of your existence through the enthusiasm of mutual acquaintances who have expressed their occasionally tiring interest in your work and, more often, your relationship with Kuroko Tetsuya. I am not writing this e-mail with intention of even recognizing such a relationship, though I assure you I would never wish anything but the best for Tetsuya. No, my aim is potentially more lucrative for all parties involved._
> 
> _I have immersed myself in your writing these last few days and, while sport is hardly my preferred pastime or favored topic, I found your work oddly captivating. Your use of language is simple and effective, and your presentation of people reads as realistic and energized as one would expect from a practiced journalist, though a young one. I’ve gleaned your e-mail address from the rather uninspired website of your agent and editor, which advises me that you are currently embroiled in a personal scheme to doff the journalistic coil and fancy yourself a novelist._
> 
> _I can’t say that I applaud your decision; novelists tend to be self-important and boorish, and in my experience journalism, even when presented in a framework of fiction, is far more noble a field. However, I will not begrudge you the desire to expand your horizons. You have the talent; that much is certain._
> 
> _I will not humble myself enough to assume you know nothing of my past or current endeavors. It will save me time in getting to my point. I have recently negotiated and promised my way into a major television pilot. While I am not at liberty to discuss the affiliated parties until ink is dry, I will say that the network is currently looking for a marketable, big-budget, thoughtful drama to appeal to its viewership_ not _interested in the exploits of murderous royal families, and the producer directed an arguably popular film about the Mafia sometime in the 70’s. I promised them the finest story. They are unconcerned, largely, about the script at this point. The script will be sorted once the story is in place._
> 
> _I am requesting that you write my story. Keep only three things in mind: episodic structure, potential for expansion on the plot of universe, and accessibly dramatic elements. Otherwise, I am unconcerned with the subject matter and would prefer you to be as ambitious as possible. I have the power to make things happen._
> 
> _While I would rather the press not catch wind of this project at present, I know enough to be aware that I cannot facilitate miracles simply with wishes. As such, I do not want the media to latch onto this project as a reunion of the Generation of Miracles._
> 
> _However, if such a thing were to happen, I would rather Tetsuya be part of that reunion._
> 
> _I leave the decision in your hands. Respond to this e-mail and a meeting will be arranged, at which compensation will be discussed._
> 
> _Regards,_
> 
> _Akashi Seijuurou_

While I was still staring, agape I’m sure, at the name on the end of that letter, my thoughts were interrupted.

“So what do you think?”

I shook my head out of my reverie and looked up to see Aomine standing over me, hand on one hip between our tables. With a smirk, he pointed jauntily at the copy ofThe Way of Hurricanes on the edge of my workspace.

There was a postscript on Akashi’s letter.

> _P.S. Again, I am aware that I cannot facilitate miracles simply with wishes, but do not inform Daiki of our alliance should you accept the offer._

“It’s good,” I said, smiling just beneath my words.


	13. Wine Country

Midorima Shintarou, under the patronage of the Akashi family, debuted with a well-hyped photography exhibition at age 18. His early experiments with depth of field led to less critical acclaim for his artistic excellence, and more underground notoriety for his technical endeavors. By age 20 he brought several innovations to the field of cinematography, earning respect from his peers and eager invitations from godheads of the film business. I looked at his work online in the days leading up to my first trip out West, and found it to be not at all what I expected. His still photography was sterile, morose, even alienating in its perfection. On film, however, his particular talent was given the room it needed to breathe. I finally strapped myself in for the arduous task of watching _Anguine_ , Akashi Seijuurou’s most noteworthy film to date, on which Midorima had been cinematographer. A four hour piece about a man pathologically obsessed with snakes, I expected it to be excruciatingly boring, one of those arthouse flicks that wore hubris on its sleeve and didn’t want to be understood.  

Instead, it was amazing, and I didn’t even have to be a pretentious dweeb to appreciate that. The tone of the whole film was bleak, yes, but the acting managed to lure me in and not let me go for the duration. I actually found myself muttering “wow” at a few points, as the obsession became real life for the main character and all other daily routine became crystallized within that vision of reality. Akashi’s achievements were not over-exaggerated by his laurels; he really did make me feel macabre with every sense, forcing me to swallow or clench my fist occasionally just to make sure I was still all right, still breathing.

I wasn’t sure I liked it, but I was sure that I recognized what everyone else had. I saw the names scrolling by on the credits and saw a couple of notable exceptions: Murasakibara was not involved in the production, and neither was Aomine. Kuroko was credited with special thanks. I half-expected Kise Ryouta to have been masterfully disguised as one of the performers, but he was nowhere to be found. Just Midorima and Akashi. Left to create something together, they had me gasping for a breath of cheerful air.

The Napa Valley atmosphere would have to do. I was boarding a plane in less than four hours on my way to meet with Akashi, on the last-minute advisement that my visit would coincide (quite by accident. I was assured) with Midorima Shintarou’s.

In the meantime, there were negotiations to be made.

Thrusting the bag clenched tightly in my hand toward her, I beseeched Riko. “Here. Please. _Please_ , and I promise you he’ll work double on Thursday when we get back.”

“Kagami-kun, I don’t like you making arrangements about my schedule on my behalf—“

The terms had already been discussed. I ignored Kuroko and continued to make my most pathetic face at his manager. Riko took the bag and inspected its contents. Having found the large beef brisket sub satisfactory, she put her hands on her hips and stared at me. “He’d better not be late again. You’re making him late, you know. He was never late before you two started doing whatever it is you do.”

Early morning smooching in the bed we were now quite routinely sharing at my nearby apartment. Even if neither of us had made move one to become more sexually adventurous yet, I couldn’t fight the temptation to detain him most times he tried to leave for work on time.

“I promise.”  As if I could keep his appointments for him. I could at least keep myself from tugging on the band of his jeans and pulling him back into the bed and into my arms when he protested weakly that he needed to get going.

“You’d better make sure of it, because if he’s tardy by even a minute, I’m coming after you.”

I bowed my head and clasped my hands in reverent prayer for her, muttering my thanks over and over again.

“Kuroko, get out of here,” Riko turned and flicked a towel at Kuroko. He flinched only slightly, and looked over at me with a withering expression. “You’re going to California.”

I actually cried out in joy and pumped my fist in the air triumphantly. Kuroko was not amused. “Kagami-kun, I needed the money from these shifts.”

I met him when he came around the bar, sighing and untying his apron. “So? Akashi wired me like three hundred dollars for incidental expenses, and that’s on top of the plane tickets and the hotel room. I’ll just give it to you.”

“I don’t like that he asked me to be there. Something about it sounds odd to me.”

“Oh, come on, you’ve said it yourself, he’s weird. And you don’t mind him, do you?”

“No, but—Kagami-kun, please, you’re crowding me—he’s very manipulative. He might have something planned.”

“Two days ago you said you’d like to fly out to California.”

“I was—“

“Two days ago you also didn’t know Midorima was going to be there.”

He looked agitated with me, and I grinned to try and diffuse the tension. With a roll of his eyes, Kuroko ducked into the back office and emerged a minute later with his messenger bag and jacket. “I don’t like him.”

“Why not?”

“Midorima and I have very different ideas about art and success. You’ll understand when you meet him. I just hope I can keep my head down most of the time.”

“Kuroko, of all the things you’re good at, keeping your head down is perhaps your specialty.” I shook my fingers in his hair and laughed when I saw him smile. “Besides, we get to spend a couple of days in California together. Maybe it’ll be romantic.”

We were clear of the coffeehouse and on our way to my place, and I bent in to smack an excited kiss on Kuroko’s cheek.

The preparations and the flight alike threw up their hands in a flurry of Things That Happened; I slept as I always did (like a champion) and stirred only when Kuroko woke me with the announcement that we were about to land. Always enthused by an unexpected trip, no matter how mundane the circumstances, my excitement reached a strange peak as we touched down in San Francisco International to a slightly warmer climate and a touch of cross-country time zone disorientation.

 A car was waiting for us; an Audi, to be specific. I couldn’t help pausing for a moment of silent awe, gesturing at the car and expecting Kuroko to share my disbelief.

He was not amused, it seemed. “Please get in the car. The driver is waiting.”

I asked him why he was being a stick in the mud as we got comfortable in the backseat. I didn’t appreciate him harshing the buzz I’d cultivated off several hours of airplane sleep and the trappings of moderate luxury. Kuroko shrugged. “It’s something about knowing Akashi and how he operates. He doesn’t hand out these things with no wish for reciprocation. He wants decorum in return.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know.” Kuroko watched the skyline pass us by on our way north to Napa Valley. “It sounded like a good way to put it. Akashi likes to imagine that people still live in more formal times. He was raised in that sort of world but he never had any peers within it, so he sort of bought our agreement to play-act it for him.”

“That sounds really weird, when you put it like that.”

“I’ll admit that’s a melodramatic explanation. But there are rules when you visit him, when you talk to him. They’re not just personality quirks. He’s trying to create this whole illusion.”

“Sounds a little Jay Gatsby, to me.”

“No, it’s more sincere than that. He’d find Gatsby gauche.”

“Wow.”

Kuroko breathed in and out deeply. “Akashi’s finest piece of art is the one he’s managed to direct around his entire life.”

I paused. Kuroko finally looked over at me when I was silent for enough time. I leaned toward him. “Every now and then,” I purred, “I wonder why you say you don’t have any talent. You put things so perfectly.”

Anxiously, I held his hand as small talk prevailed until we reached the hotel. It was a prominent-looking place called the Grove, a ranch-style hotel at the mouth of a sprawling landscape of hills and vineyards. The highway continued winding on down the road, and I wondered how far off Akashi’s fabled estate was. The Grove would have to do for the time being.

“It’s the off-season,” Kuroko explained to me after we were informed that everything from luggage to check-in was being handled on our behalf, and to simply proceed to the lounge for a drink if we pleased. “This place would probably be crawling with tourists in the summer, but right now we’ll have command of the facilities.”

“Good.” I sighed. “I could use a drink.”

The lounge, tucked back from the lobby with a low ceiling and a bank of barstools, was smaller than I expected. According to Kuroko, the real bar was on the veranda out back, where wine was sampled and snobbishness was always clicking at maximum.

“How do you know so much about this place?” I asked.

He shrugged. “We came here a lot. Akashi’s uncle owns it.”

“Of course he does.” I slid into one of the barstools without really taking full stock of my surroundings. Kuroko said he was going upstairs.

“Are you sure?” I turned to him with a despondent face, not ready to let him go and not happy with how sad the entire experience seemed to be making him thus far. One hand on his hip, I tried to convince him with my eyes. To just stay for a drink.

His eyes flicked sideways. I should have been sharp enough to know what that suggested. “Yeah, I’m—“

When Kuroko’s eyes flicked over again and this time did not return to me, I treated it as a sign. The bartender approached me for an order but I politely advised her to give me a moment. I turned on my seat and found the showdown already staged.

The media, for all its posturing about putting the Generation of Miracles on a pedestal over a fascination with its talent, certainly hadn’t missed the opportunity to celebrate five of the best looking boys an affluent California high school had to offer. Midorima Shintarou came as the biggest surprise; the way Kuroko talked about him and Wikipedia presented him, I expected a mousy shut-in with patchy facial hair and a beer belly.

Instead, he stood with board-straight posture a head above Kuroko, not even dropping his chin to look down. Though he was thin, I could see the shoulders of his slim-fit plaid shirt stretched a bit to contain the muscles of his upper arms. Though I’d been taken aback by the coffeehouse hipster style of Aomine Daiki, I couldn’t help but wonder how I would have reacted to Midorima’s look back home. Hair dyed shamrock green and shaved all but for the long, spiked, slightly floppy faux-hawk on top of his head. Ears gauged to what, at first glance, seemed nearly an inch, with wooden plugs standing out even more against his bare neck. He was wearing the sort of big plastic-frame granny glasses that I would have expected to be fake for the sake of appearance, but on closer inspection I noticed they were not only real, but quite thick.

The collar of his shirt was pulled open, down to the second button. I could see the scriptwork of a tattoo spelling some word or another across his upper chest, but forced my eyes back to Kuroko before I stared too long. The factor working most intently against me was Midorima’s face, which, aside from the punk haircut and the body modifications and the big glasses, was almost breathtakingly attractive for all of its stoic coldness.

Kuroko, in his plain white t-shirt and blue jeans, with nothing to stand out with and nothing different about him, looked suddenly even better in my eyes. As I watched the two greet each other like circling cats, I felt my admiration for him growing.

“Midorima.” He looked down as soon as he said it, trying to avoid that glare.

“I didn’t know you’d be here,” Midorima said with the deep, rumbling voice of someone with nothing important to articulate. “I’m sure Akashi isn’t approaching _you_ about this project.”

“I’m just here as a guest,” Kuroko said coldly, and glanced back at me once before attempting to breeze past. Before I could react, Midorima’s hand reached up and circled around Kuroko’s arm. Not a violent gesture, but in fact so calm that it was even more authoritative for the stillness. “Midorima…”

“I don’t like you being around here. I don’t like your influence. You’re not going to screw us over again. I have no idea what you’re thinking right now, but there aren’t any scores left to settle.”

“You can let me go.” Kuroko was hardly rattled by Midorima’s play at controlling him. He didn’t move a muscle until Midorima released his arm with a little noise from his throat, and followed Kuroko’s line of sight back to me.

“I’m going to the room.” Kuroko actually sneered around the words before he started to walk off, leaving me to stare up at Midorima from my barstool, wondering how to approach him, what to say first, whether I would even be acknowledged. He seemed to be one of those guys lost in his own influence.

He eyed me, but didn’t have a chance to say anything before another figure entered the lounge, toting what seemed to be a heavy pack over his shoulder and two suitcases in hand, grousing in Midorima’s direction. “Are you sure there isn’t a bellhop? Two people asked me if they could take our bags on my way in.”

“I don’t want anyone else touching my things.”

“Can they touch _my_ things, at least? Can I give them _mine?_ ”

“Takao. Be quiet. Go get a drink.”

With a sigh that sounded like it had years’ worth of experience in disappointment behind it, the young man deposited all the bags on the floor without regard and shuffled to the bar, a couple of stools over from me and to the immediate attention of the bartender. He was ordering a scotch on the rocks in the background as my eyes went back to Midorima.

“So I suppose you’re Midorima Shintarou.” I smirked and held out my hand.

“And you are?” He didn’t shake my hand. I wanted to gape at the audacity of it. Fair enough; he had no reason to know.

“Kagami Taiga. I’m here to meet with Akashi Seijuurou as well.” I took my hand away with a flourish, determined not to be put off by the burn.

“Okay.” He didn’t quite react.

Takao leaned over the seat between us to advise me, “He’s being a little shit. He knows who you are.”

“Takao.” Much to my surprise, Midorima took the seat between us, pushing Takao’s head aside as he did. I sensed something of an odd relationship between the two of them, and wondered alternately and within space of the same moment whether they were boyfriends or simply bound by a contract of servitude.

A bracelet with one large charm jangled from Midorima’s wrist as he reached over to pull the drink menu closer. As he eyed it, he addressed me like it was the last thing he wanted to do. “Have you ever met Akashi before? No, of course you haven’t. You’ve probably never even been to California before. Okay, here’s how it goes – I’m going to be nice to you, because he must be on to something if he spent the money to get you out here. It doesn’t mean I like you.”

Before I had time to interrupt, he was clipping right along. “Keep the talking to a minimum. Akashi doesn’t fancy himself a writer or an idea man but everything he says has a purpose, and he says it all very intentionally. So you have to listen, and you have to react. If the reaction he’s going for seems to be nothing, do nothing. Say nothing. It’ll get you farther in his favor. You’re not going there for a conversation; it’s a meeting.” He handed the menu to Takao and pointed at a drink. Takao went about ordering it on his behalf. Midorima turned to me and kept talking. “He’s not going to want you to brainstorm over cocktails or laugh about who’s the biggest jerk in Hollywood; he’s going to more or less go over the details of the contract, size you up, and say goodbye. Keep your head down, and whatever you do don’t look him in the eye unless he’s above you.”

I figured the lack of conversation didn’t extend to Midorima, try as he might to make it seem that way. I slid in between his breaths where I could. “Do his friends have to keep it so regimented?”

“Yes. Akashi doesn’t like disorder.” He was handed a mojito and I realized, with sudden thirst, that I hadn’t ordered a drink yet. I took a moment to think and to ask for a beer. The bartender gave me what almost seemed like an evil eye. I figured wine country wasn’t a big beer area, but didn’t regret my decision. “Neither do I, but I don’t expect other people to provide the consistency in my life. He does.”

I grunted in reaction to this, and watched as Midorima picked up four napkins and proceeded to wipe the moisture off the outside of his glass. Each napkin, he folded twice to lie in a neat little pile. He continued to repeat this every couple of minutes. “Why don’t you like Kuroko?” I finally asked.

“Are you sleeping with him?”

I suddenly knew how it must have felt, those first few days I knew Kuroko and asked the same question about any number of his old friends. “Yes,” I answered proudly. “Why, does it make any difference? Are you sleeping with him?” I pointed across the bar toward Takao. He pretended not to notice, but I saw him smirk.

Midorima, as I could have predicted, was unruffled. He pushed the glasses up the bridge of his nose and stared at me like I was a troublesome child. “I do a simple job, really. I look at something and I know how I want that to translate to an image other people can appreciate. I try to transplant my vision onto film. I have one task, and that’s to shoot a picture. There’s no drama that comes along with it. It’s not like the circus that people like you and Aomine and Kuroko play around with. 90% of what happens with writers is unnecessary. And the fact that such drama put an end to what could have been the greatest thing I was ever going to shoot… I’m not happy about that. So I’m wary of anyone who trusts him.”

“He brought you that far, though.”

“He brought me nowhere.” Midorima took a pointed sip of his drink.

A few minutes of silence passed.

“When are you supposed to meet him?” He asked me.

“Tomorrow morning,” I said, my tone dodgy since I wasn’t sure whether to give him the satisfaction of an answer.

“That will change,” he replied, and sighed. “Takao, let’s go.”

They left their drinks half-finished on the bar.       


	14. Kagami Taiga in His Place

He was right; it did change. At ten o’clock that night, after I’d determined to simply go to bed next to an already-sleeping Kuroko and wake up early before our meeting, a call came through from Akashi’s assistant. I was informed that appointments had been rescheduled, and was asked to meet the car to the estate at noon instead. Of course, this was fine with me. I had little choice in the matter, whether it was or not.

The call must have woken Kuroko, who rolled over and asked me blearily if I would be sleeping in the next day.

“Yeah,” I answered, and moved my arm to wrap around him as he nuzzled his face into my shoulder to go right back to sleep.

In the couple of weeks that had followed our whirlwind night after Himuro’s show, I’d had the chance to probe Kuroko a bit further about his predilections and behaviors. It turns out that Aomine wasn’t exactly off the mark concerning the drunken jibes at his libido. Kuroko, it simply turns out, was making a Herculean effort of reigning in his desire to straddle me at any given moment. “Aomine was my first,” he’d explained one night after a spaghetti dinner at my place and a couple of drinks to unwind. “And he was so different back then. It doesn’t seem like so long again, but I was ready to do just about anything, right from the beginning. You know? I mean, I was younger, but that doesn’t excuse it. I’ve always been that way.”

I played with the hair on the back of his neck and leaned in close to rub my nose on his jawline. “So why hold back now?”

“Because I’m not sixteen anymore. And because I’ll know when the time is right.”

It was the sort of answer I couldn’t argue against. Kuroko proceeded to launch his hips into my mouth as I closed out the conversation with a blowjob on the sofa, but the subject was not pursued further. Even in the short time we’d shared a relationship status, I’d learned enough to know he called the shots.    

Waking up in a hotel room on what amounted to a paid vacation, even with my boyfriend in my arms, was no different from waking up on any other day. That is, intolerable and a horrible pain in the ass. I groaned and hit the snooze alarm twice before I realized I had something of an impression to make. I stumbled out of bed, jealous that Kuroko got to stay behind, and fixed myself up to the best of my ability. I wondered if there were brownie points involved for dressing like a member of an indie band, but I didn’t have a plaid shirt or a bowtie to my name. Kuroko was still snoring when I slipped out of the room, too late for breakfast but too early to be in the mood for a hamburger. It was too much to even consider going hungry, so I told the waiter at the terrace café to surprise me. Half a smoked salmon sandwich later, I was ready to start waiting impatiently.

A white Mercedes rolled up at precisely ten minutes to noon, and I knew on instinct that it was my ride. Still unused to nice things, I fidgeted nervously until the driver confirmed my identity and asked that I please get in. I refused to sit in the back seat, and made small talk with the guy as we drove down the picturesque highway, deeper into wine country. The drive took the better part of fifteen minutes, and then the car eased onto a quaint side road lined with oak trees. I didn’t want to seem too much like a little kid, so I only soaked in the scenery from my periphery. “So is this the place?” I asked, affecting calm as we neared a stately manor house with a gigantic marble fountain out front.

“This is the place. Mr. Akashi’s probably not even back yet. He hopped a red eye from Chicago to get back into town today and he’s probably taking his time driving back from the airport.” The driver chuckled conspiratorially and eyed the front steps as the car slowed to a stop. “Yup, looks like Arnold’s out to meet you. Best get comfortable; you might be waiting a while.”

“Thanks.” I think it sounded more like a question.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Kagami. Good luck.”

“Yeah…” I bid him farewell and exited the car before I thought to thank him for the best wishes. I was smoothing down my shirt self-consciously as a middle-aged gentleman stepped down the column of bleached-white stairs toward me.

“You must be Kagami Taiga. Hello. I’m Arnold.”

“Arnold.” I greeted him with a nod and a firm handshake. He was a handsome fellow, aged well and certainly dressed more casually than any butler I knew from fictional stereotypes. Nevertheless, that seemed to be his job.

“Just follow me inside. I have no idea why you’re here or what you’re all about, but I have instructions – last minute instructions – to make you comfortable and apologize for my employer’s lateness.”

“I get the feeling you get asked to do that a lot.”

“Of all the things he is, punctual isn’t one of them. At least not with new people. Trust me, once you’re on the A-list he’ll be three hours early, but until then you’re kept guessing.”

I was only slightly offended. It made sense considering everything else I’d been told about Akashi. I was beyond being nervous, at least, and was offered a seat in the parlor and a glass of water. The parlor was the size of my apartment, roughly, appointed with artsy furniture that looked like it might break if I touched it. Arnold provided me with the water and excused himself after I assured him that I was just fine to entertain myself with my phone until the host arrived.

Akashi breezed into the house at seven past one in the afternoon, and I lifted my head from a round of Words with Friends in time to see him pull off a pair of sunglasses and hand them over to Arnold. “Sir,” I heard him begin, “Kagami Taiga is here to see you.”

“Yes, Arnold, thank you.” His voice was low, even, and managed a softness I hadn’t expected at all. I locked my phone and and lifted my hips to slide it into my pocket. I considered standing up, but in a moment of panic I forgot which would be more polite: sitting or standing? In Akashi’s case, I had to wonder. He continued through the antechamber and into the parlor, pulling off a pair of driving gloves and rattling off a soft-spoken list of directives for his assistant. “Please have Della forward my calls to the mobile; I’ll be taking messages until seven. I’m in a meeting until four, and please make sure Marty knows that dinner’s been postponed until Thursday. Let’s see… anything else… oh yes. If it’s not too much trouble, send up a bottle of Pellegrino and a—“

It took me a moment to realize that he’d flicked a pointing finger at me. He only looked over to prompt me after a few seconds’ silence. “Um…” I stumbled over any coherent thoughts.

“What do you drink?” He asked crisply, not quite meeting my eyes but certainly managing to survey me all the same.

“I’d really like some black coffee,” I breathed gratefully. I’d gone all morning without being sufficiently caffeinated, and the threatening headache was sure to be no walk in the park. “If that’s okay.”

Akashi kept his eyes on me, and his finger pointing, as Arnold the butler affirmed the requests and backed out of the room.

Left alone with him, my first instinct was the spring to my feet for an introductory handshake. However, noticing the way he retracted his hand and rubbed his fingertips together reminded me of Midorima’s caution. Akashi was everything I’d expected, actually: immaculate, refined, diminutive in stature if not in presence. He moved past me and I barely caught the beckoning motion of his wrist as he did. Dutifully, I rose to follow him wherever he was going.

He wore a blindingly white dress shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, tucked neatly into a pair of perfectly tailored navy blue trousers. His hair reminded me of everything I tried to have my hair do whenever I made an attempt in front of the mirror, a messy-on-purpose style that probably cost more to achieve than my monthly rent. His shoes were the latest Jordans, an almost garish contrast to his overall aesthetic. I supposed I had to afford everyone their vanities.

“Nice shoes,” I said as I followed him to the next room, which turned out to be a short hallway crowned by a wide-mouthed staircase leading to the next floor. He took the first two steps before addressing me. He ignored my comment.

“Kagami. I’ve been investing some considerable time into examining your work. It seems, by your quick acceptance of my proposal, that you’re eager to try new things? Or is it the money that’s attracted you?”

“I have no idea what the money is yet.”

“To put it into perspective, I’ve sunk two grand already just to get you out here to discuss it. That’s a bus ticket to the scope of this deal.”

We stepped onto the carpeted landing of the second floor, and I turned to see a bank of windows looking out on the lush and verdant grounds of the Akashi family estate. I sighed. “And I’m trying to say, the money isn’t the motivation. Not entirely.”

“But it is a mitigating factor.”

“Of course it is; I wouldn’t do this for chump change.”

“Do what, exactly?”

It was the tone of a department supervisor reading between the lines at a job interview. I crooked one eyebrow and looked at him. He’d turned to face me, hand on the knob of a rather elaborate wooden door, and was waiting for my answer. I noticed that his eyes didn’t quite match up. Something was off about them, but I wasn’t looking closely enough to figure it out. “Chase down a miracle of an idea.”

Akashi tilted his head and narrowed his strange eyes. “Your implication is as bold as it is indicative of your arrogance. And when you address me, you will keep your eyes focused elsewhere. If you please.” His indictment hit me like a gut-slug, and that was unexpected. For such a little guy, he packed a formidable tone. No wonder Taibbi’s article called him a Godfather. Akashi pushed into the room ahead of me, and I hung my head in humiliated silence.

The Pellegrino and coffee were deliveredon the heels of our arrival in the office, which was the same mixture of modern and classical that I’d seen from the rest of the house. I’d expected a standard oak credenza, but instead Akashi’s sense of décor tended toward the Swiss, with a sleek glass desk and mostly white trappings, Spartan aesthetics and only a couple of bright red chairs to lend a pop of color to the whole place. He gestured that I take one of the chairs. He asked if my flight had been all right. He asked if the hotel was to my liking.

He asked me about Kuroko.

I lowered my coffee mug and blinked, smirking as I pulsed my eyebrows at the question. “He’s well.”

“I should hope so.”

“What is he to you?” I was getting bold. I didn’t particularly care. Something about the mention of Kuroko set my protective instincts on alert, and I wasn’t about to shrink under Akashi’s scrutiny. “Why did you ask him to come along?”

“Since I like to be transparent when it’s important, I’ll answer the question.” His big white leather desk chair squeaked slightly as he shifted his weight in it. “No doubt you’ve noticed in the time you’ve spent with Kuroko that he’s something of an oddity. It’s not that he’s antisocial, exactly. Far from it; he loves people, in fact. But the purpose he serves, which he loves to serve, is so vital to this project that I can’t stress enough the importance of his presence in everything you do. Including his influence on your decision.”

“I still don’t understand how that’s supposed to work. The whole muse thing. Aomine talked about it and—“

“Aomine,” Akashi began, cutting me off firmly, “had no idea how it was supposed to work either. I’ve actually researched the matter extensively. I don’t believe in the metaphysical, strange as that may seem to anyone who watches my films. I believe everything has a scientific reason. If not scientific, psychological. The fact of the matter is, Kuroko is a personality completely devoid of ego. To the creative mind – that is, the genius mind – he is a perfect companion. He listens to ideas, he enjoys the formation of those ideas, and he is selfless to aide in the cultivation and continuation of those ideas. Regardless of the fact that he is his own person – something that cannot be ignored in any partnership, creative or otherwise – he is nonetheless a concubine of the artistic process. It might seem, to the unenlightened, that simply by being near Kuroko facilitates creation, but it’s no more than a matter of security.”

He was right. I was smart enough to know it, or at least I hoped I did. “I like being around him.”

“Kuroko on his own is not a genius. He’s… how should I put this…” Akashi leaned forward and steepled his fingers. “Dependent on you.”

“Are you essentially telling me you’ll kick my ass if I hurt him?”

He was poignantly silent for a beat. I had to remind myself that he was my age, if not slightly younger. “If you hurt his heart it makes no difference to me. I have a sentimental attachment to Kuroko that is linked directly to our symbiotic relationship. His involvement in projects means those projects are brilliant. Brilliant projects are the only ones I want anything to do with. I expect this project to be on that level. You cannot hurt him. You are absolutely forbidden to do anything that compromises your partnership. That is a condition of his agreement.”

“Do you care whether I care about him?”

“I said: It makes no difference to me. Aomine cared about him. Aomine is also a fuckwit about human relationships, and most things. Kuroko understands people and how that sort of thing works more than a vast percentage of the population. So I don’t really expect you to be exactly what he needs. But just keep the partnership intact. Creatively.”

“I’m afraid it’s already gone beyond that,” I said it with the ulterior, and admittedly shitty, intention of nettling him. I was bad at keeping a sense of decorum, especially when someone was putting his weight on me in an obvious attempt at intimidation. I didn’t like the implications he made, suggesting that I was either not mature or not emotionally available enough to make things work with Kuroko in the long term. And I didn’t know why it mattered to me; I’d only just started dating him, and no matter how strange the circumstances had proven to be ever since, I wasn’t the sort to let romantic attachments cloud my judgment and ambition.

Akashi shrugged one shoulder and I glanced closely enough at his face, for as long as I dared, to see him smirk. He stood with a flourish and walked elegantly to the side of his long, pristine desk. I heard him take in a deep breath. “That’s good. Aomine took his finest moments of inspiration, in those rare moments he actually worked on the script for our final project together, from his time spent with Kuroko. I understand how it is. How overwhelming it can be.”

His voice, and the way he said that last bit, unexpectedly pricked my brain at the seat of my knee-jerk emotions. I bristled without meaning to, and breathed in sharply through my nose as Akashi went on. I’d been warned that he was a master of manipulation. I shouldn’t have tried to nettle him. He knew what he was doing. “There’s something undeniably inspirational about a good lover. I don’t mean to sell him short; in fact I despise the word “good” unless I mean something mediocre. There’s something about the way he reacts at the height of passion that transcends description, though. It’s when he loses control that you really get that sense of connection. When he opens his eyes at you and that stare that seemed cold and blank, open and empty for so long suddenly makes so much sense. Like when you’re inside of him you’re actually opening up his soul so you can see it through those eyes. That’s the greatest moment of clarity you’ll know, from all the inspiration he gives. You know what I mean.”

I was silent. Akashi had moved behind my chair. His fingers played lightly and teasingly along the back, near my neck. My silence became telling.

“Don’t you know, Kagami Taiga?”

I sucked in another deep breath through my nose and knew I couldn’t lie to him. “Not yet.”

“Ah,” he said coolly, and continued in the circle around his desk until he breezed back behind it and reclaimed his throne. “Shall we discuss the details of the contract, then?”

In so many words, in so many implications, he reminded me of my place.

I’d be required to produce a framework for the series within nine weeks. Brainstorming sessions would occur once every three weeks, culminating in a final meeting before the pitch scheduled for late winter in Hollywood. I would retain a position as creative consultant during the production, as a condition of being on the team he dictated. The team included himself and Midorima Shintarou. “Atsushi has yet to sign, and I don’t expect he would be much of a cooperative roadblock. In fact he’s very accommodating.”

Though I wanted to ask about the others, Kise Ryouta and Aomine Daiki, I gathered from Akashi’s previous words that the latter was unnecessary and the former would not be necessary until filming began. I was presented with a short list of mandates, such as size of cast and setting preferences, but otherwise I was left in complete control.

I never mentioned an advance, until Akashi plucked a single sheet of paper from his memo pad and scratched out a number on it.

“I believe this will be fair sustenance for the next two and a half months,” he informed me, sliding the paper forward and lacing his fingers together as he waited for me to take a look. As I did, he went on to say, “A check can be cut as soon as you sign.”

I’d never seen a number so high. Not in a single paycheck, not in a quarterly payment report, not in a year’s salary. I squinted at it and swallowed thickly. Akashi wasn’t even finished. “Pending review and acceptance by the producers, you would be entitled to a percentage of all future earnings under the project’s umbrella, as outlined in the contract. And, as you’ve no doubt heard from my other old friends, I tend to take good care of my creative team outside of the regular checks.”

“My god,” I gasped finally, and rubbed a hand over my face. A long growl of frustrated confusion started in my throat. But it was too late to wonder _why me?_ All I could think of was Kuroko, and the fact that I’d ever walked into that coffeehouse in my first week in town.

“I’d say you don’t have to decide right now, but that would be a lie. The auspicious nature of this offer should be implicit. You’d be a fool to pass it up, unless your talent has been grossly oversold by your work.”

I signed my name on six different lines, and wandered back downstairs in a bit of a haze. I wondered as I shook Akashi’s cold, delicate hand where he wore his tattoo, the one that said “empire.” somewhere on his body.

Kuroko was reading when I re-entered the room. He set the book down in his lap and smiled up to greet me softly. Feeling a bit shaky, a bit fuzzy, I pulled the check out from my pocket to store safely in my suitcase before I did anything else.

“Did it go well?” He asked.

I had to think about the question, blinking at it for a few moments before answering. ”Yeah,” I finally muttered. “Yeah, it went great.”

The fuzziness in my fingers, the buzzing through my whole body: it wasn’t disorientation or anything that had thrown me off balance. It was, in fact, a single-minded knowledge that I had only one thing to be sure of in the wake of so much uncertainty. I opened my fist and then re-clenched it. Kuroko slid the book aside and tilted his head at me. “Are you hungry? We should probably go get something to eat.”

“Let’s order in,” I turned around and reached behind my head, leaning forward slightly to pull my shirt off. I found myself swimming around in the echoes of Akashi’s words, still. Sighing, I turned back to look at Kuroko. I smiled at him. “I don’t feel like going out.”

“Okay.” He cleared his throat and looked down at his lap. “Kagami-kun, you seem—“

“I am.”

“Different.”

“Yeah.”

I stood with my hands on my hips and finally hit upon the right way to say it. “You’re ready, aren’t you? You always have been.”

Kuroko was quiet, and in the silence between us he slid one leg up to bend in front of his chest. He wrapped his arms around it and I looked him in the eyes. I hadn’t thought of that stare as cold and blank until Akashi had planted the seed. Was I just that suggestible, or had he really hit on something way too important for me to deny? I wanted to open that gaze up. The way he’d mentioned. In a sick sort of way, I wanted to prove to Akashi just as much as I wanted to prove to Kuroko that I deserved it.

He still didn’t answer me. I sat on the edge of the bed in front of him. “You’ve slept with Akashi.” Was it what I wanted to say? Not particularly. But words tended to rise to the surface of my consciousness, refusing to stay unspoken until I got to some resolution. It was a good trait in negotiations over contracts. It was a bad trait in bed.

“Yes.” No denial, no question of how I’d learned this. 

“Is it odd that I feel absolutely no jealousy about this?”

“No, because you’ve met him. And you know there’s no emotional ownership there.”

I just nodded. The fuzziness in my fingers wasn’t going away, the heat on my skin and the tension in my muscles. “I really want you right now.”

I don’t know what I expected; a flat agreement, an acknowledgement, a subtly encouraging word? I don’t know that anything vocal would have been preferable to the silence with which he treated my confession, angling his head back against the wall, sitting there on the bed in his loose sitting posture, hair slightly askew as if he hadn’t left the room all day. Smug, in a triumphant sort of way. His lips parted enough to let a breath go; enough to beg me to kiss them.  

I crawled forward and grabbed him by one wrist, pulling him into a kiss before I twisted his body further into my grasp, pulling him forward and down and sideways until I was on top of him, hands and knees over him, watching as he breathed faster. “Kagami-kun…” He said it like he was begging for me.

“If there’s anything at all, anything you need to do or say, tell me now. Because we’re doing this.”

His eyes fixed on mine and I felt the power and weight of how deep the need was as he said, “Yes.” 


	15. Checkmate

The staff of the house knew Midorima well enough to let him wander as he waited, but not well enough to trust him in doing so without being watched. He’d known the rooms and hallways of the mansion since he was a child, but as an adult it all seemed so different. Anything concrete, anything material; it all seemed borrowed now, like responsibility, like reminders that no one else was taking care of them and if they colored on the walls it was their own mess to clean up.

So he stood in the central hall and looked at the photographs lining the top of the long cedar sideboard. Akashi, his parents, his extended family, and others. Some more pretentious, some less. Akashi meeting Robert Redford at Sundance. Akashi’s mother with Anna Wintour. And then, right alongside the luminaries, a photograph of Akashi as a fat-faced little boy, almost swallowed by the hood of an anorak jacket, surrounded by freshly fallen snow at a ski resort in Vale. Midorima picked up the frame and looked at it, not quite smiling. Akashi was leaning into another boy, wearing glasses and a trapper hat, looking solemn and quite unhappy to be there. Midorima remembered the trip; it was the first winter their families went to Colorado together, and Akashi had asked him over and over again why he didn’t want to go skiing. Because Akashi was so persuasive, even at ten years old, Midorima agreed to try it with him. As soon as they got to the top of the slope, he started to cry. Akashi did not try to understand, but he also did not ask Midorima to ski with him again. They spent the rest of the trip playing ice hockey instead. It had been his first panic attack; it would not be his last.

He set the photograph back in its place and reminded himself, as Akashi often did, not to feel inadequate about anything that happened in the past. Those sort of platitudes were easy for Akashi to say, of course. Working with him (Midorima figured) might be a good way to observe once again how that sort of attitude translated professionally. Then again, working with him also had its potential downsides. He was smart enough to know that Akashi was counting on those downsides, those pitfalls, those emotional misgivings, but had no idea yet how the subjects would be treated. Delicately, Midorima hoped, though the hope was an unrealistic one.

The door to the house closed and he heard the soft volley of voices, the gentle jingle of keys. He rolled his head on his shoulders to work out the tightness, and prepared to hold his tongue.

Akashi stopped at the mouth of the hallway several feet from Midorima, sweeping his eyes up and down in a quick inspection. When everything seemed to be in order, he continued, greeting him with a polite, “Hello,” and passing him to say, “let’s go into the sunroom.”

The sunroom had once been the ballroom, but Akashi hated to throw parties on his own property. He preferred for his home to be his sanctuary, and since his parents had retired to Sydney he renovated the space to be little more than a cavernous sitting room. A spread of plush chairs, of which only one at a time was ever occupied, faced the windows looking out on the grounds, accompanied by a duo of small tables on which teacups and books were often placed in the evenings when Akashi would wile away the hours in the company of himself. A chessboard was the only other interactive decoration. Midorima hardly felt like a game, and hoped Akashi would forgo the challenge.

“Sit.”

Midorima took the nearest chair and nervously tried to settle in, running a hand over the short hair at the back of his head and up to the longer crop on the crown. Akashi had been in complete favor of the hairstyle, which had been a surprise.

"It would seem that we have captured the interest of Tetsuya's new fixer-upper."

"At what cost?"

Akashi regarded him with a sharp stare; as if Midorima knew anything about ventures, speculations, and long-term gains. "Pocket change."

"So I'm assuming he doesn't know the catch yet."

"Of course he doesn't. He's an oaf with his heart in the right place, and the heart isn't the thing that suspects machinations."

"Do you think it's going to pay off?"

"The potential for publicity is off the charts."

Midorima only grunted. "Of course you know what I'm going to say."

"That you don't care about the media? That you'd rather make art flicks under shitty conditions with shitty equipment in the interest of preserving your creative freedom? Have you perhaps noticed that you haven't taken step one to making your own project since that first show my father sponsored for you?” Akashi didn’t drink, otherwise it would have been reasonable to imagine him with a glass of bourbon in hand, ice clinking as he swirled it impatiently. Instead, he simply stood in front of the window, facing away from Midorima, hands clasped behind his back as he watched the leaves sway in the breeze. “Shintarou, you're a technician. There's only one thing that brings out your creativity."

He left it at a moment of suspense. Akashi moved behind Midorima’s chair slowly, knowing he would not interrupt that suspense, and pulled back the collar on his shirt to look at the word "empire." tattooed on the rise of his spinal column. "The need to please."

"I don't give a fuck if I please anyone."

"So all those tearful phone calls losing your mind over critics panning your photography? All of that was not giving a fuck? Shhh." He leaned forward to whisper the quiet order against his ear.

Midorima was breathing faster and the fact that he didn't want Akashi to notice made it painfully apparent. "I'm seeing someone."

Akashi laughed sharply. "Did I tell you to suck my dick?"

He moved around to the window again and shrugged out of his sport coat on the way. Crossing one ankle over the other and leaning back on the glass, looking sternly at Midorima, he informed him: "We're going to be working together. You're sure you'll be okay with that? This is the opportunity you've been waiting on."

Midorima didn't know which opportunity he meant.

"It's the intern from the Spielberg picture, isn't it? The one you always talked about whose life you made a living hell just because you were finally one step ahead of someone on the ladder? See, that's what you love, and that's what you're good at. Playing the game and managing the politics. You get a rush from it. So you spent months licking boots for the distinction of being able to make someone else lick yours? And now you're fucking him? I think you're brilliant. Not just a technician, a tactician. How is it, with him? Do you let down all your exquisite defenses, do you actually give it all up, or do you just pretend to because you know how people are supposed to be when they're passionate?"

He shook his head almost disapprovingly and watched Midorima's head droop. "You know what, Shintarou?" He got closer to whisper it. "No one's ever made me lick their boots. I have never, ever, been a step below." He paused. "Is that why you like me?"

Again, he knew Midorima wouldn’t answer, and so he went on. "How many nights culminate with you thinking about being on top of me, thinking about how easily you could fit around me while you slide inside me and pant your way through a frantic fucking that's always far less awkward in your mind? We need to get it out in the open, Shintarou, how this could potentially cloud your judgment. This project is big. I can't have you thinking with your dick, I can't have you accusing me of being a home wrecker, and I can't have you thinking even for a second that I'm going to bend over and give you the satisfaction just for the sake of a smoother production. Look at me."

Midorima finally did.

"Stop antagonizing Tetsuya just because he was the only one I ever trusted like that. Stop being a knee-jerk reactionary emotional vampire, come clean with your little boyfriend about your intense power issues if you haven't already, and stop looking like this whole idea scares the piss out of you when it doesn't annoy you to the core." Midorima glanced away, studying the room. Akashi arched one eyebrow severely and gave him two more seconds before he raised a hand and snapped his fingers loudly next to Midorima's ear. "Shintarou!"

Their eyes met. Midorima knew that the minute they did, he'd be done for. Not looking Akashi in the eyes had always been a survival tactic for him; not because he was reprimanded, particularly, but because they rooted him and saw behind all the posturing. How deeply Akashi knew him chilled his soul. His cold hands came up and touched Midorima's cheeks, held his face tenderly. " _Trust_ me," he commanded.

The quiet grew long and taut between them. Midorima sighed through his nose like a frustrated pet. "You want to kiss me," Akashi told him.

Midorima's long eyelashes fluttered over his eyes as they closed; the only answer Akashi needed.

"Why don't you?"

They both knew why. It would be the same as it had been in high school when Midorima had gotten _so_ offended and felt _so_ victimized by the fact that he tried it, and Akashi, being Akashi, was completely honest about the fact that it did nothing for him. No kiss ever had.

"I still want you to be happy, Shintarou. I hope you know that. I _hate_ \--" His fingers tightened on Midorima's collar again and his tone went stern, closer to anger than it usually ever did, "-- to see all of you flounder around with trivial idiocies and diversions, when you could all be so _great_. And you, Shintarou... you're a genius. I don't call people geniuses."

It fell to him to figure out how he could express that longing for Midorima to indulge himself. Even if Midorima could never have him. Even if Akashi would never allow it.

He moved back by a few steps, looking at him as his fingers swept down the sleeve of his shirt, fingertips drifting away at the last moment of separation only to go back just as quickly. Their hands danced very subtly in the air, Akashi grabbed Midorima by the wrist and sighed. “What does it mean today, then?”

The hemp bracelet, an old one, braids fraying in some spots but nevertheless constantly on Midorima’s wrist even in his most fastidious moments. The charm, different whenever the whims of the goddesses called for it. Akashi could never understand his fascination with paganism and divination, but Midorima had never gone so far as to call it anything more than insurance against an uncertain world. “It’s the Seal of Barbuelis.”

“What’s it for?”

“The power to dominate others.”

Akashi’s smile was almost piteous as he nodded at the answer and let go of Midorima’s hand at last. He stepped back. “Do those things ever work?”

Midorima was unshaken, it seemed. “Over the weak-willed, yes. I almost wore the amulet to destroy all evil plots against me.” He glanced away momentarily, suddenly all-too-aware of his own peculiarities. “To control rebellious spirits.”

Straightening up, blinking in consideration of this, Akashi crossed his arms over his chest and stepped back by two paces. He let the tension grow just as long as he dared.

"Do it."

A subtle tilt of Akashi's head told Midorima it was all right to interrupt with a question.

"Do what?" He didn't let desire and hope cloud his knowledge of the limits that had long since put in place.

"Think about it all you want, have your little fantasy right here and I’ll watch you do it." He paused. “Pleasure yourself.”

In a lot of ways – the safe ways – Takao was like Akashi. He kept an emotional distance and always had, but his loyalty was ferocious and his passion was unstoppable once his walls were down. Midorima liked him -- maybe even would learn to love him -- because of the idiosyncrasies he forgave, the neuroses he looked past if he didn't attempt to understand them. Each had a mutual admiration of the other's determination and oddness, and together they were a little world unto themselves. Midorima feared ever having to leave it.

But then there was Akashi, with his delicacy and fineness, face and body crafted just as artfully as anything Midorima could hope to create or deserve in his professional lifetime. No one was like him, and no one else set the fire in his belly, always had, always would. Akashi planted seeds of a fetish for power play long before Midorima knew he had one, and had always used their interactions, even the seemingly innocuous ones, to indulge a slightly sadistic desire for watching his old friend squirm.

"I hope you don’t have any issues with performance anxiety."

Midorima was proud. But he wasn’t proud enough to spit in the face of a scenario rendered so auspiciously in his libido’s favor. With Akashi over him, standing there, looking down on him… the unstoppable force and the immovable object. It would never work at anything more than arm’s-length, but if arm’s-length was all he had, he was surely going to take it. Midorima went for his belt

“Open your shirt first.”

He did as he was told, unbuttoning the shirt and spreading it open with a small pang of self-consciousness. The tattoo across the top of his chest read “Married to the Past” and he had always tried to play it off like it was nothing more than a melancholy bit of prose to wear on his body. Some people thought it was the name of an obscure band, and he let them believe it. There were so many implications in the fact that he wore the declaration on his skin. And he knew why Akashi loved to see it.

“Akashi—“

“Don’t say anything.” Like the very idea left a bitter taste in his mouth. Akashi hated labeling himself and so he would never say he tended toward or existed in any sort of sexual orientation, but he did know that after the emotionally gratifying but physically intolerable experiment with Kuroko Tetsuya he could say with some certainty that sex was something he did not require as a human animal. He slaked his desires by his own hand, and that may have been best for everyone involved, considering what some of those desires were.

He wondered if Midorima would ever put the question to him, in turn: how many nights had Akashi entertained the fantasy as well? The thought of Midorima’s chest hot on his back, dropping wet kisses over his neck and shoulders, the very picture of intimacy elevated a hundredfold by the idea of his body wishboned around a hard, thrusting cock. Or maybe just the thought of it in the abstract, as he commanded it; Midorima’s cock, a thing he wanted still even if he didn’t have the full-fledged frame of _how_.

They were men of their bonds and they were men of their autonomy. Akashi watched in solemn fascination as Midorima opened his pants, looking away as he took himself in hand, eager to be at his hardest and most glorious for Akashi’s eyes. He spit into his hand and worked it deftly, the naked tip left shiny wet as his palm corkscrewed over it.

He kept his eyes closed, and that wasn’t enough for his audience. “Can you look at me?”

For once, not an order. A request, was it? It almost felt impossible. It felt like a challenge, and one that bordered on something deeper. Did he dare think it while he was working his fist in tight, shallow tugs on his cock? It seemed too much to ever think Akashi could be loving, when in fact Midorima had always felt that from him, in a way that isolated him from the others who saw him as nothing more than an unfeeling calculator of human limits. No, he told himself, even in the single-minded frenzy of self-gratification, love was all Akashi did. The tactics were unorthodox, and to some they were even cold. But for Midorima, who knew from cold and placed few people above the level of carnal fixation, he was confessor and forgiver alike.

He imagined himself taking an angel by the hair and feeling his jaw slacken, not knowing what to do at first about how deep Midorima’s cock thrust into his mouth, how firmly he was held in place and instructed to keep sucking it.

His eyes opened on the image and he looked at Akashi, saw him smile in that minute, twitching way. Midorima scanned his eyes for judgment and found none. This was not like Akashi in his attitude of analysis or measure. His eyes, one gold and one crimson, were unusually empty, invitingly open. He liked what he saw.

Midorima imagined those eyes glancing away from him, down from him, broken by an abject moment. He imagined come on those lips, Akashi’s tongue flicking out to find it when he had no choice but to lick it away…

He covered his mouth and cried out gently, cheeks flushed and neck hot. Exposed and debased, but not humiliated. His cock spit and dribbled as he shuddered in the tension of release, and Akashi watched as the come dripped to fall on the floor of his grand sunroom. A deep breath filled his lungs and he wondered for only a moment what it might be like, to feel someone else’s come on his skin.   

Footsteps were light on the floor, and beneath Midorima’s heavy breath they were the only sound as Akashi stepped forward and examined the aftermath. Feeling the eyes on him, Midorima would not look, and reached to turn one knuckle at his glasses, carefully nudging them back up the bridge of his nose with what clean touch he had left.

After a few seconds of silence, he pulled his legs together and began to shift.

“Don’t—“ Akashi started, but he hadn’t actually planned the words so they weren’t as authoritative as usual. It had been a reaction, a little gasp of a plea, and before the word even left his lips fully he’d grabbed Midorima’s wrist. The bare one, the one without the bracelet. The one that had been around his cock, the one sticky and wet with come.

Midorima still didn’t look at him, not until he felt Akashi pull his hand up, forward, and realized he was moving it to his mouth.

He stared in wonder, nearly in horror, as Akashi’s lips parted. His pink tongue poked out and swept at the tip of Midorima’s index finger, catching a thick dollop of fluid before he let go. An intense and uncomfortable jolt of excitement ran through his spent body and Akashi told him to, “Get cleaned up.”

They’d have dinner at La Boheme, he went on to inform him. Did he want to borrow a tie?

When Takao asked him about the meeting, later that night, Midorima would simply tell him he’d signed a contract. And, in so many ways, that was exactly what had happened. 


	16. Get Inside of My Bones

Imayoshi knew Aomine hated California. He knew it by the way he’d gotten the hell out at the first sign of enough financial security to haul himself to New England, and he knew it by the way he laughed at any offers for signings or functions in L.A. He knew it as his eyes wandered to Aomine’s feet beneath the table, tapping up and down uncomfortably during brunch at Jar. There was definitely something odd about his sudden appearance in L.A., made odder by the way his mood had changed halfway through their meeting. Imayoshi grew weary of trying to make him interested in the complexity of the tie-in deal with TriStar, and assured him only that there would be no bumps in the road along the way to the release of _The Way of Hurricanes._ Lee Pace was reportedly interested in the lead, and Audrey Tatou was not out of the question for the role of Jay. All speculation filtered through five different sources, of course, so the only thing Aomine had to be concerned about was waiting until the interview requests began. They would probably begin in a few weeks, once the talent signed.

“More importantly, what’s next?” Imayoshi gestured to the waiter for a refill on his tea and braced for the worst. Aomine had a generous advance in hand already, and a manuscript was needed within a few months. The contract was strict, and it was Imayoshi’s first experience in representing a client to one of the biggest publishing houses in the country. Wiggle room was not up for discussion, and Aomine’s reputation for stretches of creative lethargy would mean nothing to the people who signed the checks.

“I’ll have something,” he answered, uninterested.

“Well, I certainly hope so, since the alternative isn’t an option. I guess I was wanting something to tease everyone with on the conference call next week.”

Aomine shrugged and sat back, under the microscope and not pleased about it. “I don’t know, I’ve been thinking about dusting off Auxiliary, maybe.”

It took Imayoshi a couple of moments and a sip of tea before he remembered the story. It had been shelved for a reason. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t think it’s too mainstream? I mean, critics’ll have a field day if you don’t pull out something—“

“I know, I know. It’s just been really hard, lately, to do that. I really think I can smack the idea around and make it work for me. Deal with the psychological aspect of it, maybe give it a bit of an edge there.”

It had never been difficult to work with Imayoshi in the past. They met through one of Akashi’s numerous contacts, the young aspiring novelist and the young aspiring literary agent, and after no small amount of backroom dealing Aomine had a book deal with Random House and Imayoshi had a small stable of promising clients. He spent frugally and tended to rat-hole his money, and despite his relatively inexpensive off-the-rack suit Aomine knew he was well on the way to his first million before age 30. It was through no small contribution of his own that Imayoshi had managed to accumulate his modest fortune and good name in the industry. But Aomine had recently fallen back into the sort of habits that made an agent – any agent, and especially one as fastidious in business as Imayoshi – start to worry.

“Well, if you’re going to do that, do it now. It needed a lot of work to be even ‘meh’ last time I looked at it.”

“It’ll be better than ‘meh’, Imayoshi, get off my back.” He wouldn’t look at him. He had no idea what he was going to write, and it was obvious. He’d pulled Auxiliary out of his ass.

They were silent, and Imayoshi watched him carefully without being too obvious about it. Aomine was distracted, and not just because he hated to confront his own lack of creative energy. He nearly reached into his jacket, then sighed in annoyance. After letting him twitch nervously through three or four more minutes, Imayoshi finally said, “Let’s get out of here. I need a cigarette.”

He only smoked on the go, never in the car, and was starting to restrict himself from smoking without another smoker around. He did that sort of thing well, whittling down his options until he had none, allowing his brain and body to get used to being without something. He hadn’t gotten rich by indulging, after all.

He also hadn’t gotten rich by being anything less than blunt, either. Outside, on a small bench near a mostly-deserted dog park, Imayoshi dragged on his cigarette and put it simply: “You’re slipping.”

“I’ve got a lot on my mind,” Aomine snapped immediately.

“Yeah, I can tell.” His tone danced with amusement as he crossed one long leg over the other, showing off a pair of bright argyle socks. He rested his chin in one hand and looked up at his favorite client wistfully. “And here I thought you wanted to come to L.A. to see me.”

It was a joke, of course. Imayoshi had always been keenly aware of the fact that Aomine rarely rose above tolerating him.

“I have some ideas, I really do. I don’t feel like I should have to defend myself to you.”

“Well, you do need discipline.” Imayoshi tapped his cigarette on the side of the bench and sighed. “So this is me saying you need to get your ass in gear and do whatever it takes to get those ideas working.”

Both their livelihoods depended on it, and far more than that. Pride was on the line. The last thing Aomine wanted was to choke in the clutch. And it wasn’t an easy thing, to say _my boyfriend broke up with me, started seeing someone else, and he was the only reason I ever had any focus._

“I mean, I’ve still got the goods,” Aomine started to defend himself, nevertheless. “I’m just in a lot of transition.”

“Get out of it. If it’s relationship trouble, develop a relationship with whiskey.”

“Oh, I have that.”

“Not enough to be a postmodern novelist, obviously.”

“Ah.”

Aomine wore a tight smile. He’d meant to be more pleasant than this, to let all the criticisms roll right off his shoulders. But the phone in his pocket still had the damned text message that had ruined all of those plans. Coming to L.A. at the last minute had been completely the fault of a sudden airline ticket sale, and his impulsive nature had done the rest of the work. On the short layover in Chicago he sent the message to Kise: Are you filming tomorrow?

No, came the reply, I’m out of town. 

No big deal, although Aomine’s heart sank at the thought. The trip would need to be salvaged somehow. He remembered Imayoshi lived in L.A. and was already making plans to meet up with him instead. It would hardly be a fair trade, but it gave him a reason for dropping a few hundred on the ticket, perhaps a couple more to change to a later flight home. Kise couldn’t have been out of town for more than a day or two, right?

Skype tonight? And by that, he was actually planning on something much more concrete, such as showing up unexpected on Kise’s doorstep in Echo Park with a bottle of champagne.

Can’t. Don’t have my laptop.

Aomine was shocked by this revelation. His mind, literary as it was, began to consider what could have been important enough for Kise to forget such a staple of his lifestyle.

Wow, really?

Yeah, it’s business in Chicago.

Aomine’s smile turned tight and tepid at the thought that they were in the same city with absolutely no way of making contact.

Ah, well good luck. When can we chat next?

Saturday night? Flight home Sat morning     

K

Can’t wait 

So Aomine arrived in Los Angeles on Friday afternoon, got a room downtown, and spent his time alternating between napping and sleeping and watching a badly edited-for-television version of _The Godfather_. He got a bottle of Jack Daniels and drank less than he expected, lacking even the energy to get more wasted. He hated Los Angeles and didn’t want to go out in it unless Kise was the reason.

On Saturday morning he was determined to be professional, arranging a brunch meeting with Imayoshi to keep himself occupied until Kise’s arrival.

Halfway through brunch he got up to use the john and found a message waiting from Kise: Flight got delayed fml

There would be nothing more awkward than having to explain away why he wanted to know Kise’s flight number, no point in asking for his new ETA, and very little way to make the rest of his day tolerable as he waited otherwise. Imayoshi taking the opportunity to rip into him was the last thing he needed.

It had been enough to come to terms with the fact that he wanted to see Kise so badly he was willing to drop good money on the effort, and even more to rationalize why he wanted to make it so surprising, so unexpected, so…

 _Romantic, Daiki, you’re trying to make this romantic and of course you’re failing_.

The last weekend they shared had been magic, and every time they spoke Aomine felt a little bit more confident in the fact that Kise actually wanted it. Then he would start thinking back to that last weekend, and Kise’s face still flushed with sexual exhaustion as he told Aomine he needed to find someone else to fuck in the meantime.

He dwelled too much on things like that. Kise was just being realistic, and flip on top of that. After all, he had someone else. He was being _fair_.

Mercifully, Imayoshi got a call from someone and couldn’t ignore it. He walked toward the dog park to take it, and Aomine took the opportunity to finally answer Kise’s text message.

Sorry boo

It’s ok. Kasamatsu says he’ll take me out tonight to make up for it. Chinatown here I come. Can we reschedule Skypeing?

>:(

I know I’m a jerk.

Die

;) xoxoxo

Aomine pocketed his phone and felt his nerves fraying, his patience wearing thin. Imayoshi was walking around as he talked, gesturing firmly and speaking just below a shout. He was an elegant man, the sort who demanded respect because he respected himself so immensely. Quiet, usually, but hearing him at a controlled level of frustration made Aomine smirk. Distracted for the time being from the eminent disappointment stirring around in his belly, he crossed his arms and got more obvious about watching Imayoshi.

Aomine’s type was simple to figure out, and always had been. He liked men like Kuroko and Kise, definitely, and his eyes had wandered to others like them over the years. He liked Momoi, too, to the point that on a few occasions over the years he contemplated experimenting, stopping short of ever going through with those urges. He liked them all for the same reasons: admiration. That’s all that the best attractions ever were, he figured, and for someone who loved to analyze people and get inside their heads, Aomine was drawn like a magnet to those that held themselves and their ambitions taut and high. Kuroko had been strong enough to leave him, and that’s when Aomine realized that he’d admired him for the same reasons all along. Kise had that quality, and confidence unlike any other Aomine had known. He was picky, yes. Kise had asked him once, _why me? Why Kurokochhi?_ Why not one of the others, is what he was asking just below the surface. Deeper than that, though, in Kise’s own inimitable way, he was wanting assurance that it wasn’t just a physical attraction.

Akashi had never gotten along with him. He recognized Aomine’s talent only as long as it benefited him, and that was that. He was too unpredictable. Aomine had never taken a second look. When it came to Midorima, he was only marginally more attracted. Beyond how he looked, though, there was the same emotional complexity that turned him off. Aomine had neither the patience nor the desire to navigate someone else’s storm of mental hang-ups, and that wrote off Midorima, despite the fact that when pressed during a late-night conversation circle he admitted he wouldn’t kick him out of bed. Besides, he didn’t like men taller than him. That cancelled out Murasakibara immediately.  

Why Kise? Why Kuroko? Because they let things simply _happen_. And that’s what he still needed, whether or not he’d always be that way. Drive and ambition were the traits he admired, not to mention a pretty face, a small waist, and a tight ass, but the ability to let life take its course was the ultimate deciding factor.

Imayoshi wasn’t his usual type; not physically, at least (though he could make no predictions about his ass). Neither was Kagami, however. Aomine could only chalk it up to the fact that, in all the emotional transitioning, his dick was going along for the ride.

“Sorry about that,” Imayoshi sighed, walking over and slipping the phone back into his jacket pocket. “That was Joan in New York. We mostly just yell at each other, these days.” Joan was his contact with Hyperion books.

“That’s okay. It was interesting.”

Imayoshi shrugged. “She makes my struggle worth it.”

For a few seconds, Aomine wondered whether or not to open his mouth. He paused, and almost pulled out his phone again, but finally asked, “So what are you up to the rest of the day?”

Just a touch of inquisition glittered in Imayoshi’s eyes as he looked over. “It’s Saturday. I don’t know. Shopping maybe. Cleaning the apartment. Reading. I live a very exciting life.”

Again, Aomine knew it was only a matter of cutting himself off right there. But in that moment he could only consider Kasamatsu collecting Kise before he even had the chance to make his grand surprise a reality, and he decided to just take Kise’s initial advice about his sex life.

He paused for courage. “Need company?”

Though not the sort of creative wunderkind Aomine had surrounded himself with since high school, Imayoshi was nonetheless highly intelligent and very intuitive. He looked at him, his eyes glanced away for a moment, and then fixed back on Aomine. The tension was thick.   

“What?” Imayoshi finally asked, tone flat and slightly condescending.

The heat of embarrassment rose in Aomine’s cheeks, and he had never been so grateful for his dark skin before. Other things, though, certainly gave away his discomfort with having to explain himself. “Forget it.”

“No,” Imayoshi drawled curiously, “this is something I need clarification on.”

“No, just--” Aomine had turned away and was waving a hand in the air. “Please forget it.”

“Wow, was I supposed to be _flattered?_ ” The second refusal to discuss it was all the proof Imayoshi needed. Aomine figured he deserved the ire he was getting as a result. “Is this why you came to L.A.?”

“No!” He cried, strong in that at least. “I came here to meet someone. My plans got cancelled.”

“Okay, so I’m your back-up plan? Again, was I supposed to be flattered?”

Closing his eyes, pressing his fingers to his temples, Aomine had no idea what to say. “This is really, really awkward right now. I didn’t mean to—“

“Just write me a fucking book, Aomine. And even if I were gay, you wouldn’t be my type,” Imayoshi started to walk away at that, with a muttered, “The fuck is wrong with you, get your shit together.”

Aomine couldn’t deal with the shame of not having the final word. His ego was already being battered, and he knew he didn’t deserve it. Wayward, he may have been, but he still had the presence of mind to know himself. “I’m sorry, okay! I was out of line!”

“I mean,” Imayoshi turned around, still obviously put off by the encounter, not quite accepting his apology. He gestured in confusion at the sky, “is that what you need? To get your dick wet? Las Vegas is a car ride away, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Shut the fuck up, I was just—“

“Confused? Yeah, you’ve seemed that way a lot lately.”

“Actually I was going to say “desperate”.”

Imayoshi’s lips curled into a tight ‘o’ as he wagged a finger at Aomine. “Oooo, that’s right. That’s right, I like this Aomine better.” Though, as another man with the infinite need to have the final word, he added, “Please, like you wouldn’t love to.”

“Sure you’re not gay?”

He stepped up and reached in, grabbing a bit of skin on Aomine’s arm between thumb and forefinger and pinching hard. “Trust me. Go use this. Go write.”

He didn’t. He’d stopped the assault with some quick confidence, but his ego was still bruised. Aomine got into his rented car and drove to Echo Park. On the way a conversation continued by text.

How long are you delayed anyway? He wrote at one stoplight.

Only two hours but it doesn’t stop me from bitching

Obvs He wrote at the next.

There was a florist on the row of shops a few roads down from Kise’s bungalow. He thought about roses. Roses for passion, roses for love. Kise liked daisies better. Daisies were an innocuous sort of flower. Nothing passionate about daisies, nothing sexual about daisies. Nothing about daisies that said “cancel your plans and let me inside, I flew cross-country to ride your dick.”

But daisies looked better than roses to Aomine. And everything was about aesthetics. Like writing. Writing was in his bones, it was his natural instinct, but he was bogged down suddenly by the pre-occupation with an _idea_.  Myranda Wall didn’t have an idea. Myranda Wall was part tribute to his obsession with Beat poets, part result of drug experimentation in his late teens, and part crystallized not giving a fuck and throwing words together in ways that sounded pretty. People asked him what the story was about, and he told them it wasn’t a story. Not really. Myranda Wall was about beauty and horror and visceral things. Visceral, because that was Aomine. Things were what they were, they were what they looked like and felt like, sounded and tasted like. He didn’t like being told what stories were about. He didn’t like being told what flowers meant. And he didn’t like the idea of finding an idea before he could feel justified to write.

 _Get Inside of My Bones,_ he wrote on the card, and returned to the bungalow on the hillside, parking down the street where he found room and taking his iPod to keep him company while he sat on the curb outside of the gate. Between noon and two o’clock he listened to The Decemberists and Elvis Costello, Neil Young and The Postal Service, and thought of a thousand other things he wanted to say to Kise.

If Kasamatsu showed up, it might turn into a fight, with how the need began to consume him. Not just the need for the person he wanted to see, but for the very freedom that Kise represented. _Yes, you want me to find a thing on the side. Yes, you want me to be happy. Yes, I want you to be happy. Yes, I do my best to tolerate your thing on the side. It’s never bothered me before but now I realize it’s becoming an excuse that’s keeping us from saying--_

At half past three, A white Dodge Challenger pulled up and into the driveway next to the house. Aomine didn’t get a chance to notice whether Kise was alone, and certainly not whether he had seen him. Standing up seemed too formal; he stayed on the concrete as he heard footsteps crunching through the gravel and turned to watch Kise’s approach.

He’d left his bags, if he had any, in the car. Kise hated unpacking. His walk turned into a sly amble as he noticed Aomine and he scoffed in quiet disbelief. A good scoff; a scoff of not knowing what to say. He looked good for a man fresh off of an airplane, but then Kise looked good all the time, in everything. Aomine held up the bouquet.

“Fuuuuck you,” Kise drawled sweetly, walking up and scooping the flowers into his arms. “You sneaky son of a bitch.” His grin was achingly wide as he buried his nose in the daisies, breathing deeply.

Aomine finally stood up after pocketing his iPod, and brushed the gravel off of his jeans. He shrugged in silence and they looked at each other. He was so glad Imayoshi wasn’t gay. He was so glad he’d gotten that talking to.

Kise held the flowers aside; Aomine stepped closer, voice low and quiet as he said, “Call him. Cancel your plans.”  

The grin was replaced by a smaller, more knowing smile, and Kise opened the gate. Aomine walked through first, expecting it when Kise smacked him firmly on the ass in passing.


	17. While You Wonder What to Say

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I KNOOOWWWW it's been so long! I've seriously been working non-stop most of this month, and my plans to have a Momoi-centric chapter were dashed when I re-read the chapter in question and found it to be... well... just awful. XD So enjoy the first of two porn-continuations (with slight bits of foreshadowing!) before we skip along down Plot Avenue!

One of Kise’s more auspicious talents, unique to the Generation of Miracles and always a hit at parties, was his talent for making a perfect martini. Aomine wasn’t usually a fan of gin, but he put aside his liquor prejudices when it came to Kise behind the bar.

Humming happily as he shook everything together, Kise threw the occasional glance at his vase full of daisies and smiled. “So you missed me, huh?” He asked Aomine, who sat at the bar flipping through the newest issue of Vanity Fair. Kise was on the cover. _Travelers_   had officially reached pop culture phenomenon status.

“I did. Embarrassingly so,” Aomine said, and chuckled at himself. His nerves were surprisingly soothed by their reunion, his mood lightened considerably. “You’re turning me into a monogamist.”

“Awww,” Kise cooed at first, setting aside the cocktail shaker and leaning over the bar toward him. “No I’m not, you big dummy. You’re just getting desperate.”

Aomine raised an eyebrow and stared at him in disbelief. “Desperate? To nail you? I’d say that’s the opposite of desperate, that’s brass fucking ring.”

Kise rolled his eyes and swatted at Aomine, who caught his hand and pulled it in to kiss it. He laughed and clarified his position. “I don’t mean that. I just mean that since Kurokocchi broke up with you, you’ve been searching for your landing gear. You just operate better when you have someone taking care of you. Momoi does it on a domestic level, but someone’s gotta take your emotional bullshit.”

He’d never thought of it that way, and it offended him mildly. “ _My_ emotional bullshit?”

“Yes!” Kise knew the way around his particular charm, his ability to say things that might otherwise be thought of as rude or tactless. He knew how to mask it with a smile and make the needle of truth slide right in. “You’re amazing in bed – best I’ve ever had, no question about that. You’re wicked smart, you’re hot, you’ve got all of this going for you but you know how you get.”

“No,” Aomine had gotten up and walked around into the kitchen. As Kise finished off the martini glass with an olive on a toothpick, Aomine grabbed him from behind and pushed a kiss into his neck. Kise yelped and laughed. “Tell me how I get.”

“You brood. You get pissed off when you don’t get your way. You take criticism as a personal slight, like people having opinions is an indication that you’re not as good as you should be. As if you can please everyone, Aominecchi, please…”

Aomine accepted the cocktail, but not the entirety of Kise’s assessment. “So are you volunteering to take care of me, emotionally? If you’re saying that’s what I need.”

“I never said—“ Kise grabbed the towel on the bar and snapped it at Aomine, who only laughed. “All I’m saying is maybe you need to loosen up more.”

He laughed drily. “Talk to my agent, he thinks I don’t care enough as it is.”

“I mean the opposite of being lazy. Have more fun. You don’t have enough fun.”

“I have plenty fun!”

“Going to bars and getting hammered isn’t what I meant. I actually want to see a smile on your face. Again. The way you used to be.”

“Maybe I don’t have enough fun because you live all the way out here,” he suggested slyly. Kise shrugged and didn’t exactly disagree, moving his hand in a conceding gesture. “And don’t try to make this about how I need to get laid otherwise. I don’t want you derailing me from caring about you again.”

“All right, fine. I won’t. Been saving yourself for me, then?”

Aomine’s hand wandered down to grab his own crotch. “All of it.”

Kise rolled his eyes. “You have zero class.”

Aomine murmured around the lip of his glass: “With a dick like this, who needs class?”

A swift breath through his nose, a strong gulp of his drink, and it was obvious that Kise couldn’t take it anymore. “Yeah, that’s… that’s true. Let’s go to bed, then.”

Sensing the opportunity for what it was, Aomine smirked at him. “I’m not finished with my drink.”

Kise began to unbutton his shirt, not content to wait. “What did you say last time I saw you, about the West coast being stifling?”

Aomine purposefully began to take his time with the drink. Kise shrugged out of his shirt; he wasn’t wearing an undershirt beneath. He moved closer, and ran his hands over Aomine’s arms. “I did say something to that effect, yes.”

Slowly, keeping his eyes on Aomine’s, Kise dropped to his knees. “Feeling stifled?” He asked, and ran his hands up between Aomine’s thighs to massage the front of his trousers. Aomine swayed by degrees but kept his cool.

“Did the daisies earn me a blowjob?”

Kise slapped him on the thigh. Aomine gave a small noise of approval. That hadn’t been Kise’s intention. “The fact that I want to give you a blowjob earned you a blowjob. Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Me, flatter myself? I don’t need to do that, obviously. You’re doing a fine job by inference.”

A dark chuckle, and Kise broke into his pants. “I love it when you pull out the five dollar words.”

“Suck my dick,” Aomine placed his hand lovingly on Kise’s cheek and whispered.

“That’s also nice.”

The moment reminded him of the time he’d been in the same position in Akashi’s billiards room. It was the New Year’s Eve party in their junior year, just before Kuroko started dating Aomine and only a couple of months after Kise introduced himself to the group to begin with. They kissed at midnight, and Aomine didn’t let go. Being fixated as he was, this didn’t faze Kise in the slightest, and he let the groping continue into the dark room at the end of a marginally quiet hallway. Aomine, stinking of alcohol already, leaned against the billiards table and went for his belt. “Do you…” Kise began with a nervous ball in his throat, only drunk enough to still know everything that was happening was just beyond his control. “Do you want to?”

He already felt a little empty inside, knowing Aomine might not even remember it. In that moment, though, he didn’t care. He was after what he wanted, and what he wanted was the dark-skinned boy in the cheap madras suit.

“Yeah,” Aomine breathed into him, grinding their lips together hard enough to be forcing recognition past the boundaries of drunkenness. “Suck my dick first.”

Kise had done so, and the rest was so awkward he didn’t like to think about it, nor remember it. Everything was so different now. Aomine was in the moment, he was cognizant and mumbling happily and when Kise looked up he was moving his lips on unspoken words, wearing a fresh and naughty smile.

“I’m sorry I almost ruined your surprise,” Kise said, holding up his heavy dick to lick the underside, tonguing the ridge teasingly. When he enveloped the length of it again, Aomine struggled (happily) to respond.

“You didn’t. It was a stupid timing. Glad you stayed home tonight, though.”

He was silent as he watched Kise’s head bobbing up and down, eager to please as always. “Damnit, you’re so good,” he said through clenched teeth, trying to keep himself from getting too excited too quickly.

Kise knelt back and his lips popped away from the tip of Aomine’s cock, fist taking over quickly. “It’s a happy surprise. I haven’t gotten fucked in two weeks.”

“Are you kidding me?” Aomine nearly snarled. His normal reactions were compromised by the overwhelming desire to pin Kise to the ground and tear his clothes off. “That’s almost when I last saw you.”

Kise shrugged one shoulder. Aomime went on. “Your piece on the side isn’t doing his job.”

When Kise met his eyes, quickly, almost coyly, Aomine went on again.

“I’m better than him, aren’t I?” He asked, tone heavy and laced with only the most unforgiving of intentions.

Kise looked up, held his eyes for a few pointed moments, and slowed his stroke on Aomine’s cock, watching the other man take in a slow, bracing breath through his nose when he did.

“At least tell me I’ve got a bigger dick.”

Even Kise had a limit for bullshitting around. “You know you do,” he said matter-of-factly, and leaned back with his hands on the kitchen floor. He tilted his head and surveyed the scene, Aomine standing in front of him with his cock hard and high, martini glass in hand and nearly empty, otherwise looking proud and fuckable as ever.

“Bed?” Kise asked.

“Here.” Aomine bent forward just enough to hold out a hand which Kise took unquestioningly. Once on his feet, Kise was wheeled around by that hand and pushed at the small of the back. He put his palms on the countertop of his center island and felt arousal starting to warm his belly.

“I eat here,” Kise informed him gently.

“I’m about to eat here.” Aomine growled into his ear, moving close behind him, hands roaming Kise’s bare chest as his cock curved up against his back. Kise’s head rolled on his shoulders just slightly. The noise he gave was somewhere between desperate and contrary, the sort of sound he knew Aomine couldn’t resist.

“No, you’re not. I just got off a plane, and you’re not that nasty.”

“Then I’m about to fuck you, take a shower with you, possibly fuck you again in the shower, and then bring you back in here and lick your pretty little cover of Vanity fucking Fair asshole, does that sound better?” Aomine had already broken into his pants, holding one arm around Kise’s chest while his lower half lurched into the other hand.  

“Oh, god,” Kise gasped, mouth still open in pleasant shock when Aomine leaned over his shoulder for a plundering kiss.

“Then we’ll switch places,” he pulled away from Kise’s mouth and whispered, leaving him just enough time to whimper in response before being pushed forward on the marble countertop.

Kise felt irresistible in Aomine’s hands, and not irresistible in the same way that he was supposed to feel in Valentino and Armani, posed in front of cameras or fawned over on a red carpet. Not irresistible in the way of convention and photogenics, clothing and good lighting. Over a kitchen counter with his pants gathered around one ankle he was grabbed in just the right places, and felt the way Aomine’s fingers slid over his ribcage when his body stretched into their coupling. He felt the way his ass hit Aomine’s hipbones on each thrust, the right kind of curve in the right kind of place, given the right kind of moment to feel it. His thighs flexed and Aomine’s hands roamed them, his shoulders tightened and Aomine’s tongue traced them, his forehead sweated and his abdomen shuddered and his cock got harder and harder.

Nothing was held back, not in the interest of moving slowly nor anything else. Aomine wanted to hear his voice, so Kise gave it to him, crying out with every thrust, so concerned with the vocal performance that he forgot himself. He drooled on the counter, and smiled at being fucked hard enough to cause it.

“Next time I want you on your back.” Aomine wrapped both arms around Kise’s waist and leaned over him tightly, moving his hips in short, shallow thrusts while he thought out loud. “I want to watch you while you’re making those sounds.”

“You should see your face.” Kise had to pant a couple of times to get his bearings before he could continue. “You get all big-eyed and pretty when you’re getting fucked.”

“Is that how you like me?” Aomine grabbed Kise’s earlobe, the pierced one, between his teeth. Kise cried out, but did not answer directly.

Sometimes he hated the feeling right after an orgasm, the feeling that it wouldn’t be able to happen again right away, the feeling sometimes that it might be days, or weeks, before the next one he had in the company of Aomine’s body. However, he was willing to sacrifice a drawn-out ordeal on that particular day. Already, plans had been made to give them more chances at drawing out the indulgence and euphoria. They came quickly and messily, and recovered in silence until their separate silences floated together, prompting something to be said.

Aomine occasionally gave his pre-occupations away in those unguarded post-coital moments. “What were you doing in Chicago, anyway?”

“Freezing,” Kise answered simply. He thought about pulling his pants up, but then remembered that he’d come all over his own stomach and Aomine had come all over his ass. He stepped out of his clothes and turned around, shooting a quick smile at Aomine. He was padding away into the hallway in just his socks, ready to relax in the comfort of a hot shower. “Don’t worry about it; just meetings.”

Kise never had a reason to lie, so Aomine didn’t press the issue when he followed. 


	18. Methods of Aggression

 The hills stretched on forever, at least that’s what it seemed like. No trite metaphor really entered my mind, and I didn’t have enough energy to think of a better one. They were simply there, redolent of the freedom and possibility of the land they represented, the luxury and wealth of those who made fortunes on the grapes growing there. So much _land_. So much _space._ There was nothing like it where I came from. Mountains, sure. The Hamptons, if you had the money. Seascapes, rocks (lots of rocks), and hills of metropolis, rivers of freeways. Coal mines burning behind a veil of dense Appalachian forest. I still wasn’t certain whether I liked California, but I was at peace with it, within it. I had a fat check waiting to be deposited in my bank account, a seemingly bright (and potentially stressful) creative future, and—

I glanced over and managed, for the first time, not to be shocked. Kuroko was stretching his arms out on the balcony next to me, squinting at the early morning landscape. He hadn’t been there last time I checked, and I’d nearly convinced myself he would out-sleep my thoughtful meditation. I felt very connected with him. I felt too connected. I felt almost shy, in a way I tended not to feel.

“Hey,” I finally said, and reached over to run my fingers in a strange half-considered motion over his arm.

“Hey,” he blinked, and looked at me. When our eyes met we couldn’t help it when the connection spread into a mutual smile. He held my gaze long enough that I was finally the one who broke contact, glancing out over the hills.

“It’s, like… crazy nice out here.”

It was all I could think to say. We were both thinking about something else, but my brain refused to just let it happen quietly. My tongue darted out to wet my lips and I breathed out. We were thinking about the same thing.

“Do you feel all right?” Kuroko asked. I looked over sharply.

“Yeah. Of course. What sort of question is that?”

“You were very intense last night. I want to make sure you slept well.”

I almost blushed. The memories, brand new and fresh in my mind, had been drifting just below the surface, but with that Kuroko brought them all back to the top. “I feel fine.” I lifted an eyebrow as I angled slightly toward him. “And you? Being on the receiving end of all that intensity?”

I had to throw it in. He’d left the opening, after all. Kuroko scratched his leg and moved forward to lean against the railing. It was weird, to look at him in his t-shirt and boxer shorts, to know I’d already explored him completely, that this was the first time I’d seen him with clothes in several waking hours. It was weirder still, to be sitting there without my coffee, already feeling the energy building toward doing it again. “I’m a bit sore, actually.”

With considerable effort, I tore my eyes away from his little boxer-clad ass. “Really? I’m sorry.”

“No,” he turned his head to look at me over his shoulder, and smiled. “No, it’s all right. It was just a while since I did it last.” He looked out to the hills again. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

So, though I’d learn with time to expect it, Akashi had been right. Without going through the excruciatingly lurid details of the night, I will say that by the time I was leaning over Kuroko and deep inside of him, something simply and stunningly _happened_. With his mouth half-open on a gasp and a shudder he looked at me, right through me, ripped into my soul and made the raggedy thing feel whole in a way I certainly hadn’t expected. He looked sort of crazy, he was so focused on me, on us, on the thing happening between us. He was _divine_ in that moment, and though I’d never really given sex a second thought as anything more than an indulgent pastime, I was unexpectedly reevaluating.

He was hungry, he was responsive, he acted without guidance in the most unexpectedly exciting ways. He pulled me at the shoulders, said “sit up” between heavy breaths, and held on while I did. Legs spread wide and arms locked tightly around me, he just moved there in my lap, staying close and still staying frantic. I got over my pounding heartbeat and realized I’d never fucked anyone in that position. We were so close, and if he was working at appealing to my intimate sensibilities, he got it perfectly right. Head spinning from the look on his face, I focused on the rhythm until I could form words. “You like it?”

“Yes,” he replied, voice high and whisper-thin.

My fingers went down to find his ass and I held onto him, guiding his movement there with the strength of my arms. He settled his weight into them, trusting me to do the work. A minute or two passed. “Don’t come yet,” I whispered back to him, smirking into the order. “Let’s see if we can last.”

I’m sorry, did I say I was going to skip the lurid details? Call it a lapse in self-control.

The grand tour of a sexual marathon didn’t work exactly as I’d planned. I turned Kuroko around and put him on his knees, told him to put his hands on the wall over the bed. He looked too good in that position for me to dive right in. As if thanking him for being so accommodating, I was jerking him off with a few sweet kisses to his back when he whimpered and shot his load, then apologized for it. “What are you apologizing for?” I asked. “I made you come, that’s a very good thing.” He was still hard. I was still milking him for more while he moaned.

“Kagami-kun, you can keep going as long as you want. I like it.”

Kuroko didn’t deal in details, so I didn’t ask him for any. I just offered him a hoarse “Okay,” and took it as a challenge. Though he told me to take my time, he may have been manipulating me into a quick finish, judging by the way he started to react after that. He was more vocal than I’d known him yet, from all the fooling around we’d done up to that point. He tended not to offer more than a stealthy whine or a few soft moans, and yet with my cock moving inside of him he was suddenly giving me cues, raising his bedroom voice, not forming words but making the most delicious sounds.

Trite as it was, the thought struck me and I told him before I could censor myself: “Say my name.”

He whined harder at that, and his head snapped back for a moment. “Kagami…” he didn’t add the “-kun” this time. I was strangely pleased by this.

“Hold on,” I grunted, and I calmed myself enough to slow down, to draw it out even more, to lean back. “Kuroko. Get on top.”

That’s where I lost the ability to stretch my stamina any further, with Kuroko on top of me, hands on my thighs to balance himself while he rode me. I told him to look at me, and he did. I didn’t ask him if it would be weird if I looked at him while I came, because maybe that was indicative more of my personal hang-ups than anything else. I gulped back a breath and felt the wave of pre-orgasm take me into the current I could no longer fight against, and his eyes nearly closed when I made the final thrust from below, a shallow grunt and a shudder from my body the only other indicators.

He was most beautiful in the aftermath of it, though, moving with measured thoughtfulness on my tender cock until I’d outrun the magnitude of my climax, sliding up my chest to kiss me, rotating his hips just enough that I felt myself stirring around inside of him. “Kagami,” he whispered, kissing my heavy eyelids while I tried to catch my breath and fought off the urge to go right to sleep. “That was very good. You’re very talented.”

I had enough energy to chuckle slightly, to let my eyebrows lift in disbelief. “You kept pace with it. I’m impressed.”

Kuroko kissed me on the mouth and pulled away from it only because he needed to reply. “I came too soon. I’ll try harder next time, to hold out.”

The urge to tell him to stop being an idiot about things that didn’t matter was outweighed by my impossible exhaustion. All I could force was a smirk, murmuring a tired and loving “Idiot” as I put my shaky arms around him.

Had I expected our first time to be a more meditative affair? Maybe. But then, I should have always known. Kuroko was, if nothing else, completely focused on allowing me to be myself, giving my roots a place to cultivate. He’d already been doing it with my writing, and he was obviously intent on doing the same with our sex life. We hadn’t paused to talk over every detail, we hadn’t been overthinking it or even treating it with undue gravity. The most demanding he’d been was telling me to get a condom from his suitcase (“You brought them?” I’d asked, surprised. “Yes,” Kuroko replied. “I thought this would be a good chance to do it. I brought lube, too.” He did not remark on the fact that this made me blush).             

Any more demanding, and I might have gotten contentious. Any more meditative, and I might have had second thoughts. On the balcony, finally feeling the need for my morning coffee start to overwhelm me, I stared at him and wondered if I was being manipulated. Not by him, but by the whole machine that surrounded him, whether he welcomed it or not.

We got dressed enough to make our way down to the hotel café, and over bagel sandwiches and sub-par coffee he caught on to my sudden stewing. “What’s the matter?”

“I wonder if I rushed it, is all.”

He blew across the surface of his coffee to cool it, and looked at me over the brim of the mug. “Did you want to do it?”

I shrugged. “I suppose.”

He nodded because he knew. “Would you mind me mentioning my past for a moment? Or is it not a good time?”

My sigh was much more beleaguered than I actually felt. “No, it’s okay.”

He set the mug on his coaster and said, “It’s true, I slept with Aomine on our first date, as soon as we agreed to be more than friends. Because people are weird until you sleep together. People you’re dating. That’s not the final point for me, because I think there’s a lot more to explore. So, it’s not so much that I like sex –“ I was concerned for a moment, and my expression went accordingly. Kuroko noticed in time to repudiate my assumption. “—which I really do! It’s just that I don’t want to be a trophy or something. I don’t want someone worrying the entire time we’re dating that if something wrong is said or something isn’t done to the letter I’m going to deny them sex. So I’d like to make a proposal…” He paused to sip his coffee again, and I worried at what was going to follow.

“Yes?”

“That sex won’t be our method of aggression. Either allowing or withholding it, that’s not a way of communicating for us. Just ask if I want to do it, or I’ll ask you if you want to do it, and answer honestly. No grey areas, okay? That way, we’re free to actually focus on what matters. Like how we are as people. No matter how good the sex is, that can’t be all that keeps us together.”

There was something deeper to his proposal. I held up my coffee mug in a mock toast after thinking over it for a moment. It seemed common sense to me, but I’d never been in a relationship like Kuroko had. “Deal.” We nodded together, and I felt comfortable enough to ask, “Is that what kept you hanging around, then?”

He knew what I was talking about, and started nodding before I’d even finished the question. “Even after Aomine changed, he’d always talk me back to his side in bed. That’s why I mentioned that you’re a tender person. Because he was tender only when it got him somewhere. You’re actually that way all the time.”

I didn’t know how to react. I just nodded. “Yeah. I can see that.” It was weird to hold the mirror up based on things someone else noticed. Weird, and humbling.

“I’m sorry that it’s unfair to you, me basing so much on comparisons. I just—“

I waved my hand in the air between us. “Don’t worry about it, really. I’m just overwhelmed that you even think about it, that you have actual relationship… you know, emotional relationship development. That’s a new thing for me.” Which was so sad to admit that my voice dropped off and I looked away when I said it. Kuroko, wisely picking up on that cue, didn’t respond. The conversation would have been awkward to keep up, after that, so I scanned the room for anything interesting to be a distraction.

Sometimes I wish interesting distractions wouldn’t be so timely. “Isn’t that Midorima’s little dude?” I asked before I knew what I was saying, and pointed at the coffee bar.

“Yes, I think it is,” Kuroko said, just a notch above disinterested. I was about to shrug off the spotting when I realized I’d been spotted back.

Coffee in hand, he strode over to our table. I almost laughed. He looked like a mess. “Kagami Taiga,” he greeted me, and yawned.

“Takao, was it?” I remembered just in time. He touched the side of his nose to indicate I was right. “How are you doing on this fine morning?”

He blinked a few times and looked down into his coffee, like it would remind me. “I’ve had two hours sleep and I just got kicked out of the room.” He still hadn’t acknowledged Kuroko. Probably because he didn’t even realize he was there, I reminded myself.

“Wow, what did you do?” I laughed.

“Absolutely nothing. When Shin-chan decides it’s time for me to get out of his space, it is not something to be argued.”

I saw Kuroko roll his eyes subtly, which was uncharacteristic and very amusing to me. I continued to chuckle and shrugged. “How in the world can you deal with that guy? It’s like he has a whole dining room set up his ass.”

Despite my desire at times, I was not rude enough to make Takao stand. I offered between conversational volleys that he pull up a chair, and he did. Anything to get my mind off overthinking things with Kuroko, I figured. “Um, he’s brilliant. He’s a leg-up in the industry for me, and without someone to take his bullshit he crumbles like a cookie, so I feel it’s my destiny to be his support system. Maybe I’m masochistic, I don’t know! I don’t know.” The coffee obviously hadn’t taken effect yet, but he was still smiling as best he could.

He was cute, for a squirrelly sort of guy. Midorima wasn’t dating down, certainly, but it still felt like a shame that Takao was being treated without his due regard. It wasn’t my place, though, to tell him what his due regard was. Takao seemed content, if a little put-upon. While I nodded at his answer, he stretched over his head and grimaced into a stretch.

I recognized that stretch, that grimace. “Rough night?” I said, in the shittiest teasing tone I could.

“Hey.” Takao held up a warning finger. “Even if it weren’t for all that crap I just told you, the sex is more than worth it. And between you and me…” He leaned forward, like spies were installed at all the other (empty) tables around us. “These are the best trips for that.”

“Takao, I’m here too,” Kuroko finally spoke up.

“Oh, hey buddy! Didn’t see you there!” Okay, weird; within the space of one minute Takao’s caffeine had kicked in, and he slapped Kuroko lightly on the back, grinning. “So, between you, me, and Kuroko, then. These are the best trips for that.” He held onto Kuroko’s name when he said it. He knew the history there.

A dreamy lopsided smile was on his face when he sat back in his chair, looking proud. Obviously two hours sleep had been all he needed. Obviously two hours sleep had been all he had time for, considering what they’d gotten up to.

“Midorima is still obsessed with Akashi, isn’t he?”

Takao seemed only momentarily irritated by Kuroko’s bluntness, and meanwhile I only barely contained my first instinct to leap from my chair and punch the air with an “oh no, you didn’t!”

But then Takao replied, “Oh, yeah,” with the most self-satisfied look on his face that I’d ever seen. “Why do you think these trips are the best? I’ll go fucking invest in a red wig if he’ll let all that frustration out more often.”

I threw my head back and cackled. Kuroko actually smiled.

“What’s going on?” We all knew the voice as its owner approached our table.

I looked up and glanced at Midorima, but didn’t have time to check my attitude. “Whoop, whoop, fun police.” I muttered. Takao barked a quick laugh and I stifled myself on my sleeve.

“Good morning, Midorima.” Kuroko said as politely as ever. He was, of course, ignored.

“Takao, go pack. We need to get to the airport.”

“I’m allowed back in?” He kept his arms crossed over his chest and looked up with a smirk.

Midorima didn’t repeat himself, and only met Takao’s gaze, pushing the glasses up his nose when he did.

“All right, but I need to take a shower, still!” Takao stood up and sighed, stretching again with less of a grimace. “Thanks for the laugh, guys. Have a safe trip back.”

“Hey, you too!” I shot the air with a quick finger salute. I did not acknowledge Midorima.

“Thank you, Takao,” Kuroko added.

“You can take a shower quickly. I didn’t call for late check-out,” Midorima explained firmly.

“Quickly? Really? And here I was planning on having company,” Takao said just loudly enough that we were sure to hear it, and my eyes darted over in time to see him run his fingers up the back of Midorima’s neck in passing.

Takao was halfway out of the café when I noticed that I was being watched, probably unconsciously since Midorima’s eyes had gone so wide that he likely had no idea what he was staring at. “You’d better hurry and get on that train,” I said to him, managing not to laugh (again, barely).    

“Fuck you,” he said quickly, and turned around as I finally lost it.

“Kagami, the staff are all staring at us,” Kuroko said after about a solid minute of my uncontrollable laughter.

“I don’t care!” I wheezed. “I’m too happy to care!” 


	19. Turn on Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is not a real chapter!! I just felt like writing a little interlude about RE!MidoTaka, and this happened. Sorry to make you excited that the plot might start moving. Anyway, MidoTaka, all right! Because I think Takao is just the sweetest babby, and I don't get enough reason to write about him being a sweet babby in this story. So here we go!

“So what’s your favorite album?”

Confused, because he knew he recognized the voice but had never heard it do anything but bark orders, Takao pulled a face as he looked around.

“Behind you.”

So he turned around. Midorima kept his hair in a more conservative style then, and his ears were only gauged to 0. Most of the crew were sweaty from the long morning of shooting, but Midorima kept three extra shirts in his bag, and had switched into a pristine one during the lunch break. Takao’s shirt, by comparison, was soaked through at the neck and back, and it was only upon hazy evaluation that he realized it was an R.E.M. shirt. That must have been what Midorima was referring to.

The question made him hesitate. He knew it was a test. It had to be. Just like everything Midorima made him do, from fetching camera bags in the pouring rain to fetching tacos from the craft services table. His smile quivered and he shrugged. “If I say _Eponymous_ , is it cheating?”

Midorima thought about it. “Yes.”

“ _Succumbs_ , then.”

“Old school. I have to give you credit.” He moved past him to retrieve a bottle of water, and their eyes glanced off of one another just long enough to have Takao wondering all day how to ask Midorima if he wanted to meet for a drink after work.

The first day, he said no. The second day, he said no. The third day, he wanted to know why Takao was so persistent.

“Because this jobs sucks except for you.”

“This job is what you have to do to make it,” Midorima answered condescendingly. “And I just make you do all the hard work.”

“I know. But you’re forgiving, oddly enough, when I fuck up.”

Midorima paused to consider this, not even looking at him. “You don’t fuck up often. And that’s good.”

It was the closest he came to a compliment. The next day, he said yes to that drink, even though he didn’t look Takao in the eye when he did.

“Hey, are you a virgin?” Two weeks after that first drink, they were meeting regularly at a spot called Spacebar a few blocks down from their location. The shoot was over in two days. Without saying it, they worried that they wouldn’t be on the same unit, or even the same film, when things wrapped and they moved on. Midorima pretended like it didn’t bother him, but a few shots of rum made a big difference, and by mid-evening he was asking awkwardly personal questions, which Takao just laughed at before answering.

“No! Why, are you?”

Midorima blushed, but his cheeks were already flushed from the liquor. It hardly mattered. “No!” 

“Ah? Sounds like you’re protesting too much.” Takao leaned close and was thankful they’d gotten a table instead of seats at the bar. He was close enough to make Midorima squirm.

“I’m not…! I mean… that’s none of your business!”

“Why did you ask _me_ , then? Were you hoping I was?”

“ _No!”_

“You’ve never had sex, have you?”

“You’re being really forward!” Midorima said, gulping down more of his drink than he intended to, just to punctuate his irritation.

“Oh, am I? Well, something must be on your mind…”

They were silent for a few seconds as Takao tried not to give in to a bout of giggles. “Hey, you wanna know something?”

“What?”

“When I said this job sucks except for you… it’s not just because we make a good team, and it’s not just because you’re nice to me.”

“I’m not nice to you!”

Takao ignored him, and stayed close as he said, quietly: “It’s because I like to look at you, especially when you’re working.”

Midorima looked a tiny bit mortified, and didn’t say anything. At the same time, though, he didn’t push Takao away.

“Hey, I really need to know. Are you a virgin?”

“ _Why do you need to know?_ ”

“Because I want to know if I’m going to be your first.”

Midorima kept drinking.

They were on studio gigs. They both lived in L.A. – Midorima in the hills and Takao in the valley. They met in the middle. There were first kisses and first buttons unbuttoned. Staying for just a few more minutes led to hours of making out, soft pawing at preludes until Midorima would inevitably say he needed to go.

One evening he arrived with a new haircut and an overnight bag. “What’s this?” Takao asked.

“I needed a change of style,” Midorima answered, touching the back of his head compulsively because the lack of hair didn’t feel quite right yet.

“No, what’s this?” Takao nudged the overnight bag that had been left in his foyer with the toe of his shoe.

“I’m going to spend the night.”

When Takao didn’t respond, Midorima continued into the kitchen for a glass of water, raising his voice: “I can’t guarantee anything will happen! It isn’t even an offer! I just don’t want to drive back home after we start drinking!”

Midorima would never admit it (he didn’t admit to much), but Takao knew he loved it when he made the suggestions, took the initiatives, talked dirty. Midorima wanted an aggressor, in that way, because it seemed like a hand-wave to let his inhibitions drop. He was so guarded, so well-maintained, so exacting. And then, Takao leaned into him, straddling his lap on the couch, and asked if he wanted to have his cock sucked.

Everything changed. Suddenly Takao adopted the Midorima of Two Worlds theory, supposing it might be a completely different person who ripped a button off of his new Dockers, he was so eager to get inside of them, a different person who asked, shyly and discreetly, if Takao would let him fuck his mouth. Shyly and discreetly, until things got going. When the pieces were all in place and the proper holes filled, nothing was held back. Nothing was quiet. Midorima was a messy combination of sexual characteristics, brutal and demanding and ravenous and rough.

He wanted to be wanted. And Takao couldn’t think of anything, once clothes were off and limbs were locking, than wanting him.

Takao refused to believe he’d been a virgin, he took to his sexual education so naturally. Midorima explained that he’d simply imagined the sex they would have down to the letter, from the first time their eyes glanced off one another.

He was a surprisingly good dancer. Fighter, not so much. One of their first arguments led to physical violence, and despite their difference in muscle Takao proved to be the more cunning one. It had been a fight for no reason, a fight simply to have a fight. It began without regard, meaning that of course Midorima started it, and was only spoken of when Takao wanted to remind him of who had won. It was about Akashi.

The dancing was a surprise, however. It took a bottle of strong Carmenere split between them, over a supposedly romantic homemade meal at Takao’s apartment, before Midorima stood up, focused completely on a drunken whim, and announced: “I want to dance.”

Rhythm should have been expected from a man so concerned with symmetry and ratio, calculations and physics. Nevertheless, swaying close as The Temper Trap played on the sound system, Takao had to wonder.

“Where did you learn to move your hips like that?” He asked.

“I’ve cultivated the talent recently,” Midorima replied. Not wanting to lose the tender encounter to something worth a dirty-minded comment or two, Takao just held him closer and smiled.

He wasn’t the best lover Takao had ever had – that distinction belonged to a fellow called Tres he met on Spring Break in Miami, what seemed like ages ago. But the former superlative had to end somewhere. And Midorima was, nevertheless, almost exasperatingly good. Before they ever removed the first shred of clothing together, his rules of engagement seemed almost impossible. He was attentive to cleanliness and it worried Takao that he may not have been willing to explore the human body for all its messy, unpredictable possibilities. The worry wound up being pointless; when they met in the middle (Takao would go as far as the enemas, but not as far as the diet restrictions. “Fuck that,” he actually said), the middle was incredibly satisfying.

“Can I call you ‘lover’?” They were sitting on the living room floor, watching _Sliders_ DVDs, backs against the couch because they’d both wanted to stretch their legs out. Midorima had refused a sudden gig in Cabo San Lucas for a new set of Calvin Klein commercials because his horoscope said he shouldn’t travel, and the Pagan almanac warned of professional tension for Cancers away from the hearth. They decided to stay indoors that week, instead.

“That sounds like romance novel tripe, why would you want to call me that? No, you can’t.”

“But, Shin-chan…” Takao snuggled closer, and pressed his nose up to Midorima’s jawline. A few seconds passed. “Look at me,” he urged him.

“No.” Midorima’s eyes were not straying from the screen, not for anything. And certainly not after being _told_.

“Look at me,” he whispered.

“You can call me anything else. But not ‘lover’.”  

Takao paused. He thought for some time. They were silent until the episode was over. Midorima slid onto his knees to change the DVD, and Takao blurted out: “Sour Patch.”

“What?” He turned. He stared. He narrowed his eyes.

“Like a Sour Patch Kid candy. You look really good and I always really want you. But you’re all sour and hard to handle.”

Midorima shook his head, rolling his eyes as he started to regret making the agreement. But Takao wasn’t finished.

“But it’s worth it, because you always turn so sweet after I’ve been sucking on you for a while.”

Certain the nickname talk had all been an elaborate set-up for a bad joke, Midorima clicked his tongue and changed the subject. Months had passed, though, and it still made the color rise to his cheeks when Takao greeted him in mixed company with a smiling “hey, Sour Patch.”

“Why do you like me?” Takao asked, on his back on a rainy winter’s night. He asked it because Midorima had just come inside of him, was breathing more raggedly than usual after even the best orgasms, and had to be at low capacity for dodging the question.

He closed his eyes and shrugged one of Takao’s legs (carefully) off of his arm. He wore his glasses when they fucked. Because Takao asked him to. He took a moment to push them up the sweating bridge of his nose before answering.

“Because you smile.” Midorima would later deny he’d ever said that. 


	20. Date Night

 As if to give us some stern discipline for daring to indulge our wanderlust, the rain began to fall as soon as we landed back on the East Coast, and continued unabated for the next three days. In the interest of tending to hearth and home, Kuroko and I stayed at our respective apartments once we were back in the city. He pulled double shifts where Riko would allow him (they’d apparently lost a barista during his absence, and were working to fill the opening. Kuroko begged for the extra hours though Riko warned him that it was technically against the law) and texted me in between. I was trying to set up workspace at home. Using a trifle of the money suddenly appreciating in my bank account, I purchased a new laptop and desk, both of which were relatively inexpensive considering the budget I had to work with. I sank the biggest investment into a chair, in the process learning that I had never in my 20-some years known what it was like to sit in a really, really nice chair. Five hundred dollars later, it was in my apartment, and I thought it would be a waste to go to the coffeeshop and not use it to its full advantage.  

 The first night, I fell asleep in it. Just as well.

 On day two, I hung a massive corkboard and a had slew of index cards at my disposal. I started to watch the collective works of Akashi Seijuurou and Midorima Shintarou, noticing trends and stylistic elements that I could incorporate into the right story. Listening to the the discography of Murasakibara Atsushi also dominated my day, and his tendency toward sweeping, massive arrangements (despite the occasional So-Cal punk vacation) kept pulling me back to genre storytelling. Akashi and Midorima, as well; I felt their work gravitated toward a fantastic viewpoint, a point of view from beyond some unknown world. Even for the mundane, they both executed a sense of distance and wonder artfully.

 Throughout the day, I texted ideas to Kuroko. He was, as I expected, quick to provide his unfiltered opinions.

Sword and sorcery narrative?

Merlin was cancelled for a reason

_ Sword  _ narrative, then? Forget the sorcery

This is trying to compete with Game of Thrones, not be a copycat

I don’t know how to work with genre

Neither do Akashi or Midorima. Murasakibara once did the score for a SyFy original movie, so I don’t know about him. But that’s the thing: work genre within the everyday

Ideas are hard

Make sure you can fit the pitch into one sentence

I forgot the texting, and tried to concentrate on my own catalog of unrealized ideas, seeing which I could work into something potentially epic. All of my ideas, though, fell to journalistic framework or relied on their concise nature. Suddenly, fitting something worth epic status into one sentence, and having something _worth_ whittling down to one sentence, seemed like the biggest challenge.

Then I kept hovering over the folder that contained the work I’d done with Himuro.

After that, I played Madden in the living room until Kuroko called me in the early evening.

“Kagami-kun?” He answered.

“Yeah, what’s up?”  

“I just got off early, would you like to have dinner?”

I glanced out the window. It was still pouring rain. The thought of a quiet evening with Kuroko did not outweigh the thought of trudging through ice cold puddles. “Really? It’s nasty outside. Sure you don’t just want me to order a pizza and come over here?”

“I want Kagami-kun to cook.”

“Oh.”

“I thought that was implicit in my tone.”

“ _You never have a tone!”_  

“That’s not what you seemed to think this weekend.”

I started blushing and sat my controller on the floor to give the conversation my full attention. Knowing I would not win, I sighed. There was a grocery store a few doors down from my place. I wouldn’t get too wet, at least. “What do you want to eat?”

“I was hoping you would have some idea.”

“That’s not how asking someone to cook dinner works! What do you want?”

He thought for a few moments.”I’d like tacos.”

“That was unexpected.”

“We were in California for a few days and didn’t have tacos, so I’d like tacos.”

I sat up proudly. I was too distracted by the ability to boast about my cooking that I didn’t even mention to him that we had been too far north for the best tacos. “I can make really good tacos. Sounds like a plan!”

“I need to go home and walk my dog first. Then I’ll be over.”

We hesitated awkwardly at the end of the conversation, not knowing how to say goodbye, but eventually I was on my feet and changing from my sweatpants into something more presentable. The walk to the grocery store left me a bit wet around the cuffs, but otherwise no worse for wear. I shook my umbrella out just inside the door and made a mental shopping list which I knew I wouldn’t adhere to. My spirits lifted by the idea of a real dinner date, I didn’t skimp on the quality, letting my ambitions run wild as I tried to decide between beef brisket with chipotle sauce or blackened talapia with fresh aioli. I’d learned to make a killer aioli in high school, and hadn’t been able to use the skill since. I was a few moments from deciding on both, just to be on the safe side, when I heard a deep, flat “Augh!” that was all too familiar.

The package of brisket was still in my hand when I perked up and looked down the adjacent aisle. I knew who to expect, but was still amused by the sight of Aomine Daiki staring down at a lone, sad package of ramen noodles, holding four more packages in his hands. High-water khakis, oxfords without socks, cardigan, tie, glasses... the addition of a small-brim panama hat made him look ready for a night on the indie town, but the questionable meal choices in his arms screamed the opposite.

Sensing my culinary advantage, I started down the aisle toward him. “Having a little trouble?”

I saw the moment when he recognized my voice, and his face snapped into a sour expression. “No. Go away. I’m fine.” He knelt down quickly to retrieve the dropped package, stacking all five of them more neatly in his arms.

“Need to borrow my cart? We can share.” I was feeling strangely friendly, in a cocky sort of way. Maybe my unspoken win over him via Akashi was finally rearing its subconscious head (not to mention the more obvious sexual exhilarations of the last week). Aomine was, expectedly, nonplussed.

“No. I’m fine. What’s going on, why are you looking at me like that?”

I couldn’t help it. “You just look so sad, all dressed up with ramen for dinner.”

“How do you know it’s for dinner?” He started to get defensive. “I could be buying it for lunch tomorrow!”

“That’s still sad.”

“It’s for dinner.” His face fell. “Momoi left town for a conference and she usually does the cooking. She’s bad at it, but she does it.”

It was very odd, the way Aomine had been evolving as a person over the last several days, when I hadn’t even been in contact with him. From Akashi’s absolutely miserable dismissal of him, to Kuroko’s tepid retellings of the more complicated aspects of their relationship, I couldn’t help feeling that he was being -- and I couldn’t believe I was feeling this about Aomine Daiki, of all people -- treated a little unfairly. I had what I wanted, after all. And the two things I had, had only just been his. Maybe, the little devil on my shoulder said, if he wasn’t such a pretentious oaf he could still have both of those things. Well, the little angel on the other shoulder replied, if that were the case where would you fit into the equation?

I didn’t consider it my _duty_ or anything to make Aomine feel a little less shitty, but the fact was that I didn’t expect anyone else to really be doing it.

“Ha,” I started, unable to hold back a generous amount of my usual dickery. “Sorry about that. Well, add a little cilantro and some black beans to some chicken ramen, it gives it a kick at least.”

He pulled a face. “That’s some pretty fancy sounding ramen, right there.”

“Wow, don’t look at me like I’m an Iron Chef or something, it’s honestly just cilantro and a can of beans.”

“Trust me, no normal person picking up ramen for dinner would think of doing that. You cook, though?”

He eyed my cart for a moment, his face drawn into a predatory expression. I knew what was happening, and my first instinct was to maneuver myself between the cart and Aomine’s eyes. “Who are you cooking for tonight, with all that?” I narrowed my eyes as he went on. “Looks like tacos.”

“If you really should know, Kuroko’s coming over.”

Aomine tossed the packs of ramen into my cart grandly and pulled out his iPhone. I couldn’t think to do anything but sputter as he held up a finger to suggest I should wait. Before I could remember that I was well within my rights to get rude with him, he spoke into the phone.

“Oi, Tetsu! …yes, I’m fine. I ran into Kagami in the store ...nothing, he’s fine ...oi, are you two having dinner tonight? ...mm-hmm. Kagami was wondering if you’d mind if I joined you.”

“I didn’t--!” I cried, but Aomine silenced me and I was left agape as he continued the conversation.

“I can bring some Corona …well, fine then, I can bring some tequila ...Patron? Sure, why not. I’ll bring some Patron if you’ll feed me.”

“He won’t be the one feeding you!” I growled, hands gripping the cart tighter.

“Yeah, sure. Here he is.” Suddenly Aomine was shoving the phone at me and waving it. “Tetsu wants to talk to you, make sure you’re here.”

I sighed loudly and answered, sounding less than happy about it. “Yes? Hello?” 

“Kagami-kun,” Kuroko greeted me. “Let’s take care of Aomine tonight.”

“O...okay.” I was confused, but I had to agree with his unmistakably certain tone of voice. When I glanced over, Aomine was smirking. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him, shooting lasers as Kuroko wrapped up the talk with a reminder to make guacamole.

Aomine was more than happy to carry two of the bags back to my place. A bottle of Patron was also in tow, but he kept that literally close to his chest. He left his bike chained up outside of the store when I told him how close I was. “Do you live near here?” I asked as we made our way up the stairs of my building.

“Eh, a few blocks. This is the less crowded of the places I can buy food, and less expensive.”    

“Are you really concerned about expense when you’re buying ramen?”

“Hey, knock it off about the ramen!”

Once inside of my house, he was kind enough to step out of his shoes, and placed his hat on the little table inside of the door. “Wow, this place is pretty snazzy. You’ve done well for yourself, Kagami.”

The man who had looked crestfallen to be dropping his ramen sniffed his way haughtily through my apartment, appraising my taste every now and then. “I’m going to start cooking. Make yourself comfortable.”

I was tying back my apron when I heard him let out a practically orgasmic sound. I would be lying to say it didn’t do _something_ for me, but I wasn’t about to admit it outright. Instead I rushed over to see what had happened, and was not surprised by what I found.

“Holy shit, can I sleep here?” Aomine asked, leaning back in my brand new leather executive chair. I rolled my eyes and was about to turn back to the kitchen before I remembered two things at once: Akashi had warned me not to mention the new project to Aomine, and his name and notes about his projects were literally plastered all over the walls.

“Get out of there!” I shouted at him sternly, and he gave me a grumpy expression. “I mean it, get out of there. I’ll make you a drink, just get the fuck out of my study!”

“Spoilsport,” he snorted at me, obviously only wooed by the promise of a drink.

“Take it easy,” I warned him once he was sitting at the bar watching me chop tomatoes. “I saw firsthand that you can’t handle your liquor that well.”

"Yeah,” he shrugged and looked at the glass in his hand. “It’s a curse. There’s so much I don’t remember from high school because of it. Thing is, I function to a pretty high extent. Then I just get tired and literally fall asleep.”

“You black out.”

“No, I--”

“No, idiot, you black out, that’s exactly what blacking out is, if you don’t remember what happened. So who was the designated driver back then?”

I knew the answer before he said it. “Kuroko. Kuroko just doesn’t like drinking that much. He likes it, but not to the level some of us did.”

I swatted at his hand when he reached for some of the freshly grated cheese. I was curious, of course, so I asked: “Who else drank to that extent?” I was about to add that I didn’t see Akashi as the type, but then I remembered I wasn’t supposed to have met him, nor Midorima.

“Uh, Midorima’s actually what I’d call a weekend lush. He could drink you under the table, but it always took some coaxing to get him to even start drinking. Sad, because he’s approximately a thousand times more fun with some liquor in him. Kise... Kise drinks responsibly. He drank like an adult from the time we met, pacing himself and knowing what he could handle. Weird actually. Murasakibara...” He took a moment to think. “You know, he wasn’t really a drinker. He’d get behind some wine coolers --anything sweet -- but he was always too busy smoking. Akashi was practically teetotal. I would love to see him drunk. Uh, let’s see. Momoi’s like Kise but she sticks to whiskey, just whiskey. That’s it, really. That’s everyone.”

I gave it a moment to soak in, and tossed a ramakan of salsa on the bar, along with a bag of chips I happened to have. Aomine gasped like it was a feast unto itself. “I didn’t ask for everyone’s alcohol history, but okay.” I added, more to cover my own ass, “I’ve never even met some of those people, really.”

“I look like I don’t give a damn, but I’m paying attention to everyone around me. That’s why I’m a writer, I have to let out all those observations somehow. The dirt I have could fill a book. A book about the Generation of Miracles. It would be a great book.”

I lowered my knife and let my shoulders slump. “You just said you don’t remember half of what happened in high school.”

“Shut up.”

I forced the chips and salsa away from him some time later, claiming he would ruin his appetite, and explained to him what I was doing as I started to cook the brisket and blacken the fish in alternating pans on the rangetop. He listened intently, tipping back his glass every now and then and nodding in between. He asked questions, like what the olive oil was for or how I was going to make the guacamole (obviously he’d never actually seen a fresh avocado cut open before, prompting me to ask if he was sure he was from California), but mostly just watched me.

Then, he spoke up with more purpose. “You know what I like about you, Kagami?”

I wasn’t expecting that, and turned with a challenging eyebrow raised in his direction.

“You’ve got it together. Like, you’re dumb. No offense, you just seem like such a dumbass--”

“--wow, really? _No offense_ , shithead?”

“--no, shut up! Let me finish! You seem that way but you’re not, when it comes down to what matters? Like, you have a great apartment that doesn’t look like three bombs and an orgy of goats went off in it despite your best efforts--” _how visceral_ “--you love writing, you can cook, and obviously you have what it takes to keep Kuroko interested. You don’t fuck up every human relationship you’re in--”

“--oh, I wouldn’t go that far--”

“--and you just seem really calm about everything. Like, you know you’re good, but you don’t feel the need to prove it all the time?”

I felt like, if I had the capacity for deeper evaluation, I could glean some sparkling truths and revelations from Aomine’s little tirade, not just about him but about myself. However, I have zero talent for deeper evaluation. And besides, the door opened at that moment and Kuroko walked through, calling out that he was sorry for being late.

Aomine turned on his stool and shouted a happy hello, while I smiled smugly and kept my place at the stove, waiting to be greeted. Sure enough, Kuroko walked up to me and, much to my pleasure, placed a hand on my back as he drew up to his toes to kiss me on the cheek. “Hello.”

“Hello. Help yourself to some chips and salsa. Everything else is almost ready.”

“Hello, Aomine.” He turned around I could hear him shrugging out of his coat.

“Don’t I get a kiss?”

“Don’t push it!” I turned and pointed at Aomine with my spatula. The look he gave me was strange: like he’d said it specifically to see what sort of reaction I would give, and was overjoyed by the one I’d chosen.

“No, you don’t get a kiss, Aomine.” As usual, Kuroko seemed neither amused nor irritated.

We ate at the bar, which was odd considering I’d purchased three stools and had never, until that night, used all three of them. I confessed this to my company, and Aomine took the opportunity to raise his glass. “To friends, then!”

It struck me the way uncomfortable truths do, sometimes: that yes, we were friends. I wanted to punch him in the mouth occasionally, but I was never angry enough to actually go through with it. He’d dated my boyfriend but they had also cooled off into the sort of relationship that I always wished I could maintain with my exes: begrudgingly respectful, and each still utterly aware of the other’s flaws. Maybe I had that with Himuro, but I’d never know; we weren’t close enough anymore to find out.  

In fact, he made me feel the way Himuro had made me feel every now and then. And that, I have no doubts, is what made me the most uncomfortable.

“Aomine, how much have you had to drink?” Kuroko asked as he helped himself to another taco.

“Enough,” Aomine pouted. Kuroko was sitting between us, which may have been a bad idea if I wasn’t sure that it was the only way to keep me from getting physical with Aomine by the end of the night. I don’t mean in that way.

Maybe I mean in that way.

“Exactly, enough. I need to cut you off. You’re going to need to go home.”

“Eh?” Aomine whined. “Can’t I crash here? I don’t want to bike in the rain.”

I bristled at the idea. “No! No, you can’t crash here!”

“Oh, yeah.” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. “This is _date night_ , I keep forgetting. Don’t worry, I’ll sleep on the couch, you can still have sex. It’s not like I’ll notice.”

“You might notice,” Kuroko said, as I wondered how to respond beyond indignant stammering. “We might keep you up.”

Aomine cackled as I focused on my half-eaten food. “There are two ways that can be taken, Tetsu.”

“We might keep you awake,” he corrected himself politely.

“Well, only one way to solve that, then...” Aomine reached over the bar, in front of Kuroko, and poked me in the arm. “Kagami!”

I snarled as I acknowledged him, figuring there was no way to blend in with the furniture. “What? What, you’re going to make another perverse reference to a threesome, I know. Just get it over with!”

Before I knew what was happening, he fisted the fabric of my t-shirt in his hands, and pulled me forward, leaning in front of Kuroko. I braced myself on Kuroko’s knees just in time to feel Aomine’s lips press against mine. 


	21. I Don't Care

Kuroko’s hands were between us – as he pushed against my chest he pushed against Aomine’s as well, not very hard, but forcefully enough to get his point across. “Aomine, please don’t sexually assault my boyfriend, it’s very rude.”

Aomine pulled away and I wiped my face off immediately, grimacing as I saw his face twist into an expression of embarrassment combined with indignation. “I’m not doing that! I’m just kissing him!”

“No, that is exactly what you were doing. You were doing that thing.” I managed sternly, trying to hide the fact that I really hadn’t minded the feeling, nor the fact of the kiss itself. I minded that Aomine felt like he never needed to communicate what he wanted, in the current situation or in any other.

He sputtered for a moment and fell back into his seat, pouting dramatically. “That wasn’t what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to be rude, I didn’t want to be like that at all. I’m… I’m _not_ like that.”

“No, actually you are.” I decided that, rather than hold it inside, I needed to say something. Calling out personality flaws was always easier after drinking for a couple of hours, and as someone who had been called out in a similar state before, it was also easier to take it. Whether Aomine would learn anything or not… well, that was the eternal question, wasn’t it? Did Aomine learn anything from _anything?_

The face he gave me was almost wounded, slumping there on his barstool and catching my eye over Kuroko’s shoulders. Kuroko leaned forward, sensing our confrontation, and let us continue. “What?”

Had he expected that we were sharing a _moment?_ We’d been civil, certainly, drinking and eating and having a relatively good time until he felt the need to smear his sexual tension all over the scene. I was surprised, actually, that he’d waited until we were all in a private setting. In public it would have been easier to brush it off and laugh into another line of conversation if he’d been rejected.

“You don’t listen to people! You didn’t listen to your friends, you didn’t listen to Kuroko, you don’t listen to Momoi, and now you’re not listening to me!” I felt a rush of adrenaline as I ticked off the boxes, compounded by the fact that I’d succeeded with Akashi’s favor, without even really trying where Aomine had failed despite being given chance after chance. “Professionally, personally, emotionally, you just think it’s your way or no way, and then you act gloomy or like it’s someone else’s fault when you fall on your ass! You know what, it’s not that I don’t like you. I actually can see myself getting along with you, but—“

“Wait, wait, wait—“ He held his hands up and waved them in the air, turning to face me. Kuroko disappeared even further into the fray, but I was always aware of him, going to far as to place a protective hand on his shoulder. “This from a guy like you?”

“A guy like me _what_?” I shoved my thumb into my chest, leaning forward a bit more threateningly than I planned. “You just said it all yourself! I live on my own, I cook and clean for myself, earned all my own money, I’ve had steady jobs since I started my career, and I happen to be very happy with the people I’ve allowed in my life! So? So I’m not a successful novelist yet because literature is the most childish, backstabbing, and subjective field out there? Is that your argument? Is that why you think I’m dumb? Maybe I like being immature about my work because _at least I still enjoy it!”_    

I really hadn’t meant to go that far. Too many emotions had bubbled up too quickly, and I balked immediately after speaking, after seeing Aomine’s shoulders slump despite his hands still being in the air. The way uncomfortable truths sometimes do, it hit him, too. Only he was in the most inopportune spot to hear those truths. Maybe the alcohol dulled it a bit, but his expression suggested it was all going to his head, and perhaps to his heart, more intensely than I’d counted on.

He went from looking wounded and slightly angry to looking sick with something. Regret, maybe? Humiliation? Revelation? Or maybe… maybe he was just sick.

Yes, that’s exactly what it was.

Five minutes later I stood in the doorway of the bathroom, casting my eyes anywhere but his back. He just stayed on his knees on the floor, waiting for another wave of sickness to hit him. “Can I get you anything? Some… water? Some chips?”

“I don’t want chips, dumbass!” He barked, then mumbled in barely decipherable words: “Are you sure that avocado was good, because I think the food got me sick.”

“Food poisoning wouldn’t hit you that quickly, and no, the avocado wasn’t bad. You had two martinis and then a Corona with dinner, and that took you about an hour. You drank too fast. Were you nervous?”

He paused. His back tensed up like he might hurl again and I braced myself, but nothing happened. “A little,” he finally replied.

“Why?” I asked blithely.

At last he turned around, and sat himself cross-legged on the floor of my bathroom to address me. I scanned him for signs of any mess, but he seemed to have gotten sick in a relatively clean way. Still, I didn’t want that breath anywhere near me. “Because I like you! Because I like you, and I told you why, and I think you’re hot but I thought you already knew that, and I hoped you didn’t think all those things you said about me, but you do! So I fucked it all up and now I’m just… I’m hopeless.”

 _Yeah, you sort of are_ , I thought, trying to figure out what I wanted to say and how. “You didn’t fuck anything up. That wasn’t really my intention tonight, to call you out or to do this whole thing at all. I honestly just invited you over for dinner.” I left off the “because I felt sorry for you” part. No use adding insult to injury in our current positions.

He looked up at me for a moment, then sighed and lowered his head, shaking it.

Sensing that he had no idea what to say, I went on. “Listen,” I spoke quietly because I wasn’t quite sure what Kuroko’s thoughts on the situation were, nor how to even wrap my head around Aomine’s thinking. “If you like me, what does it matter? I mean, I’m with Kuroko. If you want us to all have sex I can… I mean I guess I can talk to him… but this seems like a lot of emotional trauma for something so…” I didn’t want to say “trivial” and I didn’t want to say “silly”, because it certainly wasn’t. I wasn’t entirely put off by the idea, which was strange considering my vanilla tendencies in the sack, but Kuroko was another matter. Then again, considering what I’d been learning, maybe I was the boring one. “…simple.”

He managed a slightly queasy chuckle, showing the first signs of his usual arrogant self that I’d seen in a while. It almost comforted me. He pulled his legs up and leaned over them, rested one hand in his hair, and looked up at me over the rims of his glasses. “It seems odd to say this regarding three dudes potentially fucking, but you’re being naïve regarding my intentions.”

I shrugged. I still didn’t follow him. Were we having something of a heart-to-heart in my bathroom? I tried not to think about it too much. “I’m sort of naïve, get used to it.”

“You’re so fucking cute is what,” he groaned to say it, and dragged the hand in his hair down his face. “I’m just thinking maybe we could all… you know… maybe do sort of a… a thing. Being close and shit. With each other. On the regular.”

“I know what polyamory is and that’s totally not my decision to make, nor have I ever considered it.” There was a brief silence. He didn’t look at me. I wondered whether he was smirking. Also wondering about the party who would be most instrumental in making the decisions regarding anything to do with Aomine, I leaned back and saw Kuroko sitting patiently at the bar, picking at his food with a fork. I watched him for a few seconds, found myself smiling in spite of myself.

Kuroko glanced over at me like he sensed the attention, and smiled back.

“Get up.” I turned back to the bathroom and put an arm out, opening my hand to Aomine. “I’m going to put you to bed but we’re leaving this discussion alone for the moment until we all sleep on it.”

He grabbed my hand and braced himself on the floor to sit up, and then stand. He wobbled on his feet and fell forward into me, but I was planning on catching him. Close as he was, I didn’t hesitate in putting my arms around him. My heart beat just a little faster, and I swallowed hard. “Can you talk to Tetsu?” He asked.

“If it means that much to you.”

Aomine didn’t waste time in snapping back into his most comfortable mode when he needed to. He leaned into me and tightened his hand on my back. “I’d make it worth the effort,” he whispered. “And I’m very sorry for the way I treated you earlier.”

The apology combined with his seductive promise, and I had to admit to the stirring in my belly, in my head, and in my other, much more suggestible head. I’d be a liar to say he wasn’t gorgeous. I’d be even more of a liar to say I hadn’t spent some time thinking about Kuroko’s testimony, how Aomine’s sexual prowess had always been the thing to keep them together. I stopped myself just short of speaking out loud, considering that maybe Aomine made up for being such a failure in other things by having a particularly triumphant dick game. Thank god I didn’t say that out loud. I wanted him to go to sleep. I didn’t want him to get even more of an ego boost.

He turned his head toward me but I stopped him just in time, putting a palm over his mouth. “You just threw up,” I reminded him coldly. “Brush your teeth, you can use my toothbrush, I don’t really care.”

He was suddenly coy, shying away and taking a step back into the bathroom. “Will you kiss me goodnight if I do?”

I waited.

“Please?” He finally added.

Maybe, I thought, teaching him would be more fun than I expected. “If Kuroko says it’s okay.” I smirked and turned, but he interrupted me while my back was to him.

“Oi, Taiga.” I got excited, in spite of myself, when he called me that. “Sharing your toothbrush with me already, that’s a pretty intimate gesture.”

“I need to buy a new one anyway,” I shrugged. He was chuckling in my wake when I added, “Bedroom’s at the end of the hall here, just crash. I don’t care.”

That seemed to be my mantra. I don’t care. _I don’t care_. Except I really did. I wanted to make a decision, do exciting things, make unusual patterns with my friends and my partners and even my rivals. But I wasn’t the one making the decisions. The person at the top of this little triangle was far less likely, I assumed, to agree with our initiative.

“Aomine is very emotional right now,” Kuroko said as I finally took my seat next to him. He looked over at me and I smiled. “What?” He asked.

“You put things so succinctly. But you’re always spot-on.”

Kuroko shrugged. “I guess I do. I don’t have many things to say, otherwise. I’m bad at small talk.”

I put my arm around him and leaned against him, comforted by the closeness though our mismatched heights made the position slightly awkward. “Is he okay?” Kuroko finally asked.

“Yeah.” I sighed. “He’s going to brush his teeth and go to bed. He’s going to sleep in the bed, if that’s okay.”

“Oh.” He paused. “Should I go back home?”

“No,” I said quietly, surprised that he would think that. I grabbed his chin, turned his face gently toward mine, and kissed him. “No, of course not.”

“Then where will we sleep?” He asked.

Of course he wasn’t going to take the inference, although he probably knew every bit what was going on. He was intuitive like that, but he was also a little shit like that in making me say it first.

Thankfully, I remembered something to deflect that attention. Then I remembered that that thing was, and felt a little less gracious for the distraction. “Aomine wants to know if you’d mind if I kiss him goodnight. It’s the only way I could get him to brush his teeth.”

“Do you want to kiss Aomine goodnight?”

I didn’t know how to react, and may have been too defensive. “Listen, it doesn’t really matter to me. You’re my boyfriend, he’s your ex, I’ll do whatever you think is—“

“You should only kiss Aomine if you want to kiss him. Goodnight or otherwise, empty gestures like that are unkind.” He tipped his bottle up and drank from it, eyeing me as he did.

After a couple of blinks, I found my words. I was the mediator. I’d have to just say it. I even cleared my throat beforehand. “Kuroko – if this is out of line you can slap me if you want, but – what if we did all have sex?”

“Aomine is sick; I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“Not tonight! I don’t mean tonight!”

“Do you mean hypothetically, then? Or are you asking with intent?”

Succinct, but spot-on. Kuroko would make a wicked police interrogator. I tried not to imagine him in a cop’s uniform, and went on. Stammered on, rather. “Well… the thing is… Aomine’s kiss… I mean the way he kissed me… he…”

“He’s always been too forward. I’m glad you called him out. He thinks he’s entitled to what he wants from people and that can only be stopped by those who care about him.”

“I think I care about him,” I blurted out.

Kuroko was conspicuously silent, and filled the gap in conversation with another sip from his beer. “Okay,” he nodded. “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

“I think he still cares about you, too. But so do I. A lot.”

When his eyes trained on me they were bigger and more probing than I remembered; frightening, almost. “Looks like the only holdout is me caring about Aomine.”

I felt the weight of a slug hit my chest at that, like I’d built up so much courage to even approach the topic, and it came crumbling down. “I understand that you don’t. You broke up with him. I’m sorry… forget I mentioned it, I’m sorry. I care about _you_ first.”     

“I know that. I know that, and I’m not telling you not to talk about it. It’s just…”

He paused and I tried to be accommodating, but I was too impatient to know what was on his mind. “What?”

“Kagami-kun is at his best when he is being watched…” He mumbled like he was talking out of his own body.

“Hey, hey, I’m right here! Talk about me like I’m here!”

He looked right at me again and spoke more clearly. “Kagami-kun, you like to be watched. You like to succeed when others can see it. Definitely for writing. That’s why Rainbow’s End works for you, why Aomine works for you. Maybe it’s why I work as well – not that I’m casting aspersions on your feelings, but you understand.” Sort of. “Perhaps you could benefit from another partner.”

I bit back my instinct to be defensive. “Benefit in what way? What do you mean?”

  
Intuitive as ever, Kuroko understood. I was also lost in the confusion over having my boyfriend theorize handing me over to another man so lightly. Everything was a little muddled. “Don’t worry. You’re very good in bed. But maybe you would find inspiration from the additional mental stimulation. Having Aomine around wouldn’t be a bad thing for you, nor for him.”

“What about you?” I asked.

“You make me happy. You’re happy. Aomine is unhappy. Obviously you make Aomine happy. I just want to help people do their best.”

“This is sex, this isn’t the Generation of Miracles.” I pulled him forward and touched my forehead to his, smiling.

“No, it’s actually more than sex. If I’m reading Aomine’s intentions correctly.”

“You read them a lot more correctly than I did,” I muttered, shocked.

“Let’s try it,” he said.

I looked at him unblinking for a beat or two, and then pulled back with a more puzzled look. “Seriously? Like, everything? Do you have any rules? Guidelines?”

He shrugged. “Just that you continue to make me happy. Just keep in mind what we talked about before. I don’t think that will be hard.”

We talked and teased each other, went on with less volatile discussions about our day, ate more and sat in front of the TV to watch the episode of Mad Men I’d recorded before we retired. We didn’t go into detail about the loose agreement that had been made. Details may have made it weird. It was going to be weird. I didn’t really care.

I didn’t care at the same time that I did. It was a weird balance to strike.

I walked into the bedroom while Kuroko was in the bathroom. I was pulling off my shirt when I remembered that Aomine was on my bed. Face down and twisted slightly, he was asleep on top of the covers, still in his coat and his shirt and his tie, still with his glasses askew on his face.

I remembered also that I still owed him a goodnight kiss.

The coat was pushed up on side, along with his shirt, and his jeans were riding low, exhibiting a particularly lovely hipbone. My heart leapt into my throat momentarily. He was no longer just a guy for me to regard with aggression and a bit of bile-spitting resentment. No, he was just an idiot with a heart beneath all his posturing, and I got to step back and look at the big picture of Aomine Daiki. I was also about to get my hands all over that big picture, find out just how big it was.

He stirred and turned his head on the pillow, mouth half-open as he teetered in and out of sleep. I stepped out of my pants and walked up to the bed, judging the space that was left and wondering how we would fit. He’d taken the middle – of course he had.

“Idiot,” I whispered as I bent down and kissed his mouth quickly.   


	22. Called to Mind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the long-awaited and just-plain-long AoKaga chapter! I told everyone at the beginning that I don't know how to write things that are short, and my smut if just testament to that. I can play with drabbles and surrealist ficlets, but when it comes to my favorite stories I want everyone to be in that moment. So... enjoy these two idiots finally getting it on. WHAT'S NEXT, IDIOTS???
> 
> (no really, this chapter is LONG)

Kuroko’s pancakes were unevenly cooked and awkwardly shaped, but they were good enough to feed the three of us as we convened in the kitchen. Kuroko preferred to eat standing up, leaning over the kitchen counter as he faced the bar where I sat next to Aomine. I got the feeling that he wanted to watch us, perhaps to gauge something about our interaction. Aomine was barely awake and sucking down black coffee in an effort to change that. He didn’t seem to have a hangover; he was just tired and feeble in his will to move anywhere but from the bed to a plate full of food.

“I’m working today,” Kuroko mentioned after a few bites. Forks clinked against plates and the dishwasher was running in the background. Aomine grunted in response, and I glanced over at him. Our eyes met in a bleary moment and we seemed to share the same revelation: we weren’t working. We had nowhere to go. Kuroko was making another one of his champion intimations. “I’d like the two of you to know, I don’t expect you to wait for me.”

I hadn’t even been awake for a full hour, and already Kuroko was bringing up that thing I had somehow hoped was a dream. I couldn’t have predicted what he was going to say, but when he said those words I laughed. Loudly, actually, which seemed to startle Aomine.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Kuroko’s flat expression was unforgiving, at times. He knew as well as I did that there was no use discussing everything, all over again. “I’ve already been sexually active with the two of you, separately. But you two haven’t done the same. Please explore that before we’re all together.”

“Are you giving us homework, Tetsu?” Aomine’s voice was little more than a low rumble next to me, and he snickered. I noticed he was leering at my boyfriend, which I figured I should be willing to get used to. I still wasn’t, really; not quite. “You could sound a little less clinical about it.”

“This doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s best this way, it’s for your own good. Please don’t over-analyze it. And please wash out your dishes in the sink.” He turned from Aomine (from me as well) and went for the fridge.

“Ugh, don’t pull that parental stuff on me, Tetsu…” Aomine groused, but I was quick to snap at him.

“He said this was for your own good. Maybe the discipline is part of it.”

“I’d like it to be, yes.” Kuroko turned around and spoke simply. “Aomine-kun, you should take a shower.”

“I’ll need clothes,” he picked at his shirt and eyed it unenthusiastically. Then his gaze wandered to me. I sighed, knowing I had no choice but to relent. We were about the same size, after all. “Or I can just not wear anything.”

“You can borrow some clothes, ass.” He’d have to settle for a plain Hanes t-shirt or a throwback jersey; I didn’t keep many plaid shirts or fitted v-necks around.

“Fine by me. I need to wash the shame off.” He chuckled at himself, somewhere between self-deprecation and a bit of real humiliation, and turned to stand. “Thanks for the breakfast, Tetsu!”

“You’re quite welcome. I’ll be gone when you get out of the shower.”

“I’m being hustled in there already, huh?” Aomine yawned and scratched his stomach. It was too early to be distracted by the way he threw his body around, so I focused my attention elsewhere.

“I’d like to say goodbye to Kagami-kun in private.”

“Hey, shouldn’t you be okay with letting me watch you two in action?”

“No. There will still be boundaries, and they are to be respected.” Kuroko spoke as if the process were old hat. Suspiciously so. For a rather unsettling moment, I thought _he sounds like Akashi._

I drove that thought out of my head long enough to send Aomine into the bathroom with a couple of towels and a warning that the hot water knob had a tendency to stick. When I walked into the bedroom Kuroko was changing into the clothes he’d brought along. He sensed my presence behind him, and spoke: “I was hoping I’d have a more interesting reason to need to change. I was also hoping I’d be the one needing a shower.”

It was the closest he came to being petulant. I walked up behind him and put my hands on his still-bare shoulders, stepping close enough to nuzzle my nose in his hair. I was smiling. “Not for the same reasons as Aomine, of course.”

“Definitely not.” He didn’t put his shirt on right away. We swayed together and I kept rubbing his arms, slowly as he leaned his body back into mine. “We have a few minutes now,” he informed me, as if my train of thought wasn’t on the exact same track.

He turned and our arms wrapped around each other. Kuroko drew up to his toes and we kissed, hard and long, sparing no intensity to make up for lost time. When my hand roamed down to rest on his ass, I expected a rebuff, but he only curved into my palm, back arching. I squeezed and smiled into our kiss while he gave me a noise that was as intoxicating as it was quiet.

“I wish you didn’t have to work,” I mentioned, and kissed him again before adding, “I want to fuck.”

Kuroko, though not usually one to be swayed by such talk (at least I didn’t think so), actually chuckled inwardly at that. He pressed his lips to my neck and rubbed against me. He was getting hard. I felt helpless to do anything about it, given our time and company. “We will. Soon. You have first dibs.”

That was an interesting way to hear it put, and suddenly I remembered what was going on. “Kuroko, are you really okay with this?” I asked, more somber than I probably needed to be.

He didn’t reassure me in the way I expected. “It makes me very excited to think about the two of you together. So that’s what I want to be happening. I’m going to benefit.”

“But Aomine…”

“We’re not going to talk about this right now.” He pulled away and looked me in the eyes. I was almost overwhelmed by how much I wanted him; wanted to call the coffee shop and tell Riko that he was running a fever, and decide to give him back only after I’d done every single thing on the roulette wheel of sexual adventure spinning in my mind. “I’m completely okay with it.”

And then, because sometimes it takes things a while to hit me, I realized what he’d said just before. My lips curled up into a tilted smile. “It makes you _very_ excited, does it?”

His placid expression turned into a glare. “I think that’s very obvious, Kagami-kun. I’m getting an erection.” The casual way he said it made me cover my mouth as I laughed, trying not to be overly loud. He sighed.

“Sorry, that was just funny. So…” I played around with my tone, dancing on the words and tempting him with another kiss, then another, hands on his bare back. “Care to elaborate? What should we do while you’re gone?”

“I’m very sure Aomine will be more than willing to have sex with you.”

I swallowed back my first reaction, that I might not be ready, when I felt my cock twitch at the thought of it. “That’s… that’s not unpleasant to think about.”

“Good. You’ll enjoy it.” Kuroko kissed me and whispered while he was still close: “Just make sure to get it out of the way early. I need you to be ready for me by the time I get back here tonight.”

My brain froze for a moment or two. I could have said a million things, my mind racing on all the combinations of bodies and types and sexual styles, but all I said was, “When am I ever going to get a chance to write?”

“Now that you mention that, you should probably also lock your office.”

I excised myself from Kuroko’s embrace long enough to find the key and lock the office door. And just in time, too; Aomine emerged from the shower just as Kuroko was on his way out the door. My head turned sharply in time to hear him say “later” and close it behind. I was slightly offended; only later analysis would make me think he might not have been ready to deal with Aomine. So early in the day, I wasn’t entirely ready either.

“Where are the clothes?” Aomine asked, standing in the hallway wearing a towel around his waist.

I didn’t know what to do, nor what to say. Teasing with Kuroko about the possibility of banging Aomine while he was at work was one thing; staring at him in my hallway, fresh from the shower showing off nearly everything, was quite a different one.

He wasn’t muscular in a way that suggested attention to such things, and no wonder. The guy probably lived off of lattes and ramen, mixed vigorously with booze. But Aomine was naturally fit, a winner in the genetic lottery and not afraid to cash in on that. Without really trying, obviously, he had a solid upper body and arms that made me catch my breath, but his abs were the biggest surprise.

“Do you work out?” I asked in spite of myself, eyeing the definition there. I was jealous, on top of so many other things, and what a shitty thing to be after I’d tried so hard to side-step that feeling under Aomine’s influence.

“Why, does it look like it?” Aomine purposefully loosened the grip on his towel and it crept down an inch or so, slinking further below his navel and revealing the arrows of muscle pointing inward from his hips. His other hand brushed the muscles over his stomach – not rigid, by any means, but certainly not a gut, and not the sort of burgeoning washboard I expected from a full-time writer.

“Um…” I was distracted. He had the body of a porn star and I wondered if that was matched by what was under the towel. Maybe I didn’t _admire_ him, but he was great to look at.

“No, I don’t. What, do you think I have time for that?” He paused. “The way you’re looking at me, maybe I should skip the clothes.”

This jolted me back to reality long enough to shove him into the bedroom, throw some sweatpants and a t-shirt at him, and dodge more insinuations as I did.

“You’re fine with me free-ballin’ in these? I mean, unless you’re ponying up some underwear—“

“I am not ponying up some underwear. I don’t care.”

“You say that a lot.”

I huffed and told him I was going to play some video games.

Aomine helped himself to a pop and asked what he was supposed to do all day. “Watching you play Madden is boring. Watching anyone play Madden is boring.”

I finished my play, paused the game, and turned to him. “Well, talk to me, then! Ask me questions, I don’t know! Make yourself useful and get to know me, like Kuroko said.”

“I don’t think he said that, exactly,” Aomine reached out and ran a finger down the back of my neck, but I just growled at swatted at it. “He seems really serious about this.”

“He thinks it’ll help us creatively or something,” I said just over a mumble, suddenly not averse to being more civilized about the conversation.

“That’s an interesting theory. Well, I’ve always been inspired by sex, so it can’t be a bad thing.”

“I think we’re supposed to feed off each other’s energy. More than sex.”

“I’m trying to make a joke out of that,” he announced. He paused. “Failing. Okay, so… questions then… um, you’re a top, right?”

I wasn’t as affronted as I would have been if the question had come from anyone else. “Why, do I seem like a top?”

“Oh, yes,” Aomine chuckled. “So it’s good for me that I’m a switch hitter.”

“I didn’t confirm that.”

“You implied it by not denying it.”

“Stop being a writer.”

“When you stop being a journalist.”

“Fuckin’…” I fumbled and paused the game again, but already knew I was too distracted to go on. I looked back at Aomine, who was poured into an oddly flexible position on the couch, watching me like a cat over the rims of his glasses. “Yeah, I mean, I always have. Not to say I wouldn’t change that up, though.”

“Are you implying you’d let me top you?” His face lit up almost enchantingly at the idea, and if I hadn’t stopped to remember what was being negotiated I might have been charmed.

“I mean… what difference does it make? If we’re both up for doing either, I mean.” I shrugged.

“When things get going it means I can pin you down and…” He lost his train of thought in a devilish grin, then made a hungry noise. “Dat ass. Hey, I would also get to be your first, and if you don’t mind, I think I’ll just bust a nut over that thought right here.”

“You know—“ I held up a hand and looked down momentarily. “For a critically-acclaimed novelist, you are one of the most inelegant people when it comes to talking about sex.”

Aomine shrugged and flipped onto his back. My eyes flicked to his lap to make sure he wasn’t pitching a tent in my sweatpants. Not yet, at least. “The way I see it, sex is organic, and so is speech. If you labor over not saying something a certain way, you’re betraying what are, essentially, your feelings. A lot of romance is doing that – turning shit into poetry, stuff like that. Like, when you say “making love” but you really mean “rough, messy fucking”, that’s just being insincere.”

“You make sense only to an extent. What if, for example, one person is all about the words and the meanings – like you are, obviously – but another person is all about the tactile, and wants to hear those supposedly insincere words as a set-piece?”

Aomine eyed me, didn’t even flinch while I was asking. A smirk started on my last words and he was still staring at me when he answered. “Yeah, I know how that goes, I’m actually in a thing like that right now.”

“Ah,” I nodded at my crossed legs, smiling tightly. “Kise Ryouta.”

“Yup,” he said with a clipped tone, almost proudly.

“Am I a step down from that, or just something to keep you occupied, or…?” It was a strange thing for the ego, after all; should I have been flattered that someone fresh from a celebrity’s bed had actively pursued me, or should I have been dubious of any slumming tendencies? More than that, should I have been bold enough to ask that Aomine ask to share his lover with me, if I was being so gracious as to share mine with him?

“You’re hot and you keep me interested and I want to make you come.”

He left me… speechless. Aomine Daiki, even in the least eloquent moments, managed awe-inspiring turns of phrase if nothing else. I wasn’t even sure how literal he was being, on occasion. Maybe – and this would have been truly postmodern of him – his sexual prose took the corner after passing honesty, and came right back around to being romantic simply on its merit of shock and redolence.

Aomine reached out, rolling again nearly onto his stomach, and grabbed my head. He pulled me back and I resisted only momentarily. Knowing it was no use, that I sort of wanted him to paw at me exactly in that way, I let my arms go limp and fell back against the couch, looking up at him.

“Kiss?” He asked.

“You seem the type who takes what you want.”

His face tightened and his volume dropped; he was being entirely serious. “I’m really not. I will stop anytime you tell me to.”

I didn’t apologize for having potentially offended him; he needed to be reminded of boundaries, of discipline. It was going to be an interesting road, especially since I wasn’t very interested in discipline once things got heated. So I didn’t answer him, I only nodded.

Completely different from the way he kissed me the night before, he leaned in slowly, upside-down over my reclining body, and turned his head to press his lips against mine. It was an unexpectedly chaste kiss, but he held it, and he pressed harder until I reached up to coax him into opening his mouth.

When we parted, an inescapable thought brimmed my lips. “Do you want to fuck Kuroko again?”

“That’s not my primary intention,” he answered. He was soft-spoken, he was sincere, and he was trying desperately to tell me, in his own little way, that he wanted me more. I wondered if he would have claimed his stake in me (a strange way to put it, considering the conversation of roles that had just taken place) if Kuroko hadn’t stepped in. “I will if he wants it. If you both want it.”

I let my body turn, until one leg slipped over the other and I was facing the couch and Aomine. “Does Kuroko ever top?”

It was something I hadn’t actually asked him, myself. It was a weird thing for me to ask; I didn’t talk about sex in such blatant terms. Maybe, according to Aomine, I was betraying my own feelings. I thought about it, certainly.

Aomine’s mouth twitched, pulled into a smile by what seemed to be pleasant memory. “He can be persuaded.”

I let out a quick, heavy breath and Aomine grabbed my lips in a kiss while they were still open. His fingers pushed roughly through my hair and he pulled me up, urging me to my knees. “I think we’ll be compatible,” he said.

“You’re tall,” I noted sort of sourly, pausing to survey the couch that suddenly seemed too small to be sharing with someone else. “If we’re gonna keep making out let’s just move to the bedroom.”

“Ah?”

“Listen,” I pre-empted any comments as I got to my feet, adjusting my pants, “Kuroko basically told us to have sex while he was gone. Nothing you say is going to make me uncomfortable.”

Aomine wasn’t buying it. He swept in behind me and hooked a finger at the back of my collar, pulling it down to lay a kiss on the bottom of my neck. He seemed particularly fixated on that spot, and I wasn’t helping by letting out a little “ah!” when he did. “You’re surprisingly traditional, you know.”

“How can you tell that?” I asked.

“You’re the one getting defensive about being uncomfortable. You top, you take your time, you managed not to sleep with Kuroko on your first date…” I had no idea how he knew that, but oh well. “You’re cute. And naïve. And you have a nice ass.”

“That was a leap.”

“Shut up and take the compliment.”

~*~

I liked the bedroom because it gave me room to sprawl (it was a frequent need of mine). I fell back onto the mattress first and pulled Aomine down on top of me. Everything was long, hot kisses and long, roaming limbs for a few minutes. Aomine’s glasses came off when they got in the way, and so did his shirt. Other than that, and other than my heart starting to beat faster, things remained easy,

“See, this is traditional,” Aomine noted during a pause. I just looked at him, willing him to go on. I still sort of hated him, but I was too turned on to notice. “And next you’ll be putting your hand shyly down my pants, your shirt will come off and dicks will come out, it’ll all be very paced, very predictable.”

“Are you _complaining_?” I asked, not happy with being called out just when things were getting good. I had been seconds from putting my hand down his pants, too. Maybe not as shyly as he figured.

“No.” He grinned and pressed his forehead to mine, his stance aggressive even while he was on his hands and knees over me. The position, despite how much I might have wanted to deny it, felt incredibly exciting. “But how about I change things up for you. I’m going to rip all your clothes off and we’re both just going to get naked. No striptease, no unwrapping presents.”

I shrugged, trying not to agree too enthusiastically. I wanted to; I really wanted to just spread my arms and tell him to do whatever he wanted, because it would be easier and it also might shut him up for a while, in addition to inevitably getting me where I wanted to be.

Aomine was strong; he pulled my shirt off in just a few motions, roughly. I watched his face as he jerked on my pants, felt the first momentary rush of being naked, and saw him laugh silently. “There, doesn’t it feel nice to just get all that ceremony out of the way?”

It did, actually. And, no matter what he’d said about not unwrapping presents, I eyed his lap intently as he did just that for me. Less than a minute later he was straddling my thighs, sitting up, and I was slightly disoriented by how quickly everything was moving. My eyes fixed on the slow grandeur of the way he was stroking his half-hard cock. “I want to put this in your mouth,” he said.    

“Do I get a request?”

“Yeah,” he tilted his head and took in a long breath, getting harder and bigger with every movement of his hand. One of my eyebrows twitched. He was a grower. “Chime in anytime. Keep up.”

I ignored the thinly-veiled jibe at the end and said, “I want to touch it.”

Aomine didn’t even take his eyes off of me; he just reached over, found my hand, and brought it up to place on his cock. His hips rolled immediately into my touch as I wound my fingers around the thick shaft, feeling carefully and fastidiously, appreciating it before I tightened my grip.

He was waiting for some sort of approval, I could tell. I decided to let him dangle on that fishhook for a little longer, even as I stroked him more intently. My silence was entirely proportional to how impressed I actually was. I’d never had much trepidation over the idea of bottoming for someone, but that was because I was used to masturbating, to trying a few dildos on for size and deciding it wouldn’t be so bad. Much as I wanted to enjoy what a fine specimen Aomine was, I also had to consider the sort of power he was packing behind such a nice cock. This might be more complicated than I thought.

“Had your fill?” He asked.

I closed my palm over the head and squeezed, watching his face tighten at the feeling. “Yeah, for now.”

“Stay still,” he told me, tone soft but insistent. I half-expected him to add a cloying “please” just to be a shithead.

I wondered if we would keep playing the silence game in quiet analysis of each other’s bodies for as long as it took to ride out the initial power struggle. I wondered whether – and knew, deep down – he thought similarly of me as I did of him. It was different than the desire I felt for Kuroko, which worked on several levels and got under my skin much more effectively. I wanted Aomine in immediate ways, in bold and very sexual ways. I didn’t even mind when he slid and eased up my body to fit his knees around my shoulders.

“Not quite what I was imagining,” I said, looking up at him. His cock was inches from my face; it was hard to focus anywhere else.

“You don’t mind?” He half-asked, half-guided me into the answer he wanted.

“Of course not,” I said, and wrapped my hands on his thighs to coax him forward.

He was more careful than I expected at first, pushing his hips tentatively toward my open lips. My eyes closed as I tasted him and felt the hot weight of his cockhead in my mouth. My tongue swirled around it, and I heard him grunt.

“God, you look great sucking cock.”

I’d been told that before. I made an effort not to smile too much at the assessment, and opened my mouth wider as Aomine became bolder in the movement of his hips. The fact that he was conscientious took me as more of a surprise than it should have; he’d been with Kuroko, I remembered, who required some careful consideration at times.

Aomine told me to take it easy, not to work so hard, and I knew what that meant. He reached down to cradle my head, which did more for making me feel disoriented than the rest of the stimuli combined. When I felt him thrust into my mouth, teasing me with the uneasy thought of his full length behind it, I just sucked harder and gave him a pointed look.

“Stop that,” he muttered deeply, rubbing my hair in his fingers. “You keep looking at me while you’re sucking me and I’ll finish like this.”

He should have been able to predict the reaction I would give, and he probably did. Luckily for him, my mouth was too full to say anything about his unimpressive stamina were that the case. Maybe he sensed it, because he pulled my head forward, leaning into his weight as the tip of his cock slid on the roof of my mouth and against my teeth, still not deep enough to be uncomfortable, still letting me do most of the important work. Aomine started to moan after another minute, and I wondered how long I was going to be deprived of some similar attention. 

“I wonder how tight your ass is,” he said suddenly, unexpectedly. I should have been prepared for such musings, honestly, but Aomine was still a big surprise to me, naked in bed with me or otherwise.

I tilted my head and gave his cock a parting lick as his hips drew back enough for some breathing room. _He’s fucked Kise Ryouta_ , I reminded myself once more, and once more it didn’t really make sense. _Maybe he’s right. Maybe I am pretty hot._

“Find out,” I told him. “But you’d better take your time.”

Aomine snorted. “Don’t worry, I won’t break you in half. I know you’re a fragile thing.”

“Oh, am I?”

Even though he was still smirking (that fucking smirk that made me want to shove a hand in his face or my tongue in his mouth, either way), he was leering intently enough that I knew he was rethinking his method of teasing. “No,” he finally said, and slid down my body again, hands roaming to squeeze and test the firmness of my muscles as his ass bumped up against my rapidly hardening cock. I grunted into a whimper. “No, you’re built like a beast and I like that. I like that you’re not my usual type. I like that you’re like me.”

“Egotism?” I lifted an eyebrow and Aomine started to move his hips, letting my dick slip between his cheeks with each movement. “Is that where you’re really going with this, comparing me to you?”

“You can’t deny we’re similar. We’re both big dudes, tall, great cocks.” He paused pointedly and I gave a deep chuckle. “We’re both arrogant, too. Maybe we sort of drive each other crazy, cause I think too much and you don’t think enough. But I’ll bet we fuck like magic.”

It wasn’t exactly an inspired turn of phrase, but I took it for what it was and threw my arm out toward the bedside table. “Stuff you need’s in the watch box inside the top drawer.”

“Excellent,” he breathed, and bent down to kiss me while he reached toward the it.

When he spread my legs apart and coated his fingers to dripping in lube, he was still silent. But by the time his hand stole below my line of sight to lay a slick squeeze on my balls before continuing downward, he took to speaking in a slow, deep voice. About the most important thing, naturally. “I wanted to fuck you the very first time I saw you,” he confessed, breathless although I was the one with a firm finger screwing against his ass. “I thought you were gorgeous.”

He made himself more comfortable as his finger slipped in to the first knuckle, and I moaned my approval. “Don’t get all sentimental on me now.”

Aomine bowed over my body to kiss my stomach, and twisted in deeper. “Damn,” he muttered, largely ignoring my reprimand. I could already feel the natural force possible behind his touch, and tried not to distract myself with his other potential. He thrust his finger in to its full length, and we met eyes as he moved it as slightly as he could. “Tetsu used to catch me staring at your ass while you were ordering. I can only imagine he’s since been well aware of my… proclivity.”

He started to rock his hand against me, pulling out by degrees and then slipping back in against the tightness. I was about to ask him if we could possibly not discuss Kuroko, but in a sudden rush of knowing what was going on, I realized that Kuroko was part of it as well. I imagined a swirling insanity of scenarios all at once, such as Kuroko riding my cock while Aomine fingered me, and a louder, lurching cry escaped my throat.

“And now to make it interesting,” he went on, knowing I wasn’t in a position to talk, and my hips lifted up involuntarily at the first nudge of a second finger joining in. “Still slow enough for you?”

“I think I’m doing fine,” I said quickly between breaths, and relaxed as best I could against the feeling. Quite a world away from masturbating, which came as no surprise as an abstract. The actual fact that I was at Aomine’s mercy, for which way he wanted to move, how hard, how fast, how deep… that’s what fucked my mind better than anything. My eyes started to close while I concentrated.

“Are you falling asleep, idiot? Do you need me to wake you up?” He said sharply, breaking my reverie. As accompaniment he twisted both fingers in quickly, and pumped them in a quick thrust that made me groan. “There we go.”

“I just feel good, jackass. Don’t ruin it.”

His fingers scissored inside of me and I swallowed hard, trying to keep my hips from writhing too much. I decided that I had the capacity to ask a question, just to give my already _very_ hard cock something more to concentrate on. “So you can be a bottom, eh?”

“Mm-hmm,” he answered breezily, knowing I was going in for something. He was sliding easily inside of me now, still hugged tightly, but exploring at will and very deeply. “Why?”

“So with Kise Ryouta…?”

“Why do you want to know? You like him?” His smirk grew almost alarmingly calculating.

I closed my eyes for a moment, even though I already knew Aomine didn’t like that very much. I gasped a breath when he passed just over my prostate, and marveled again at how long his fingers were. “Fuck yes, doesn’t everyone?”

“Kise fucks me,” he said it like it was nothing at all, like I’d asked his favorite color. “Hard. Well. Often. And I fuck him. Last time I visited him I had him screaming over his kitchen counter, before I sucked his cock in the shower.” He paused, and I just stared at him, definitely aware of the difference in his demeanor once he knew that he was in control of a situation. Then I imagined Kise, and my brain started to turn cartwheels. Aomine just leaned forward slightly to whisper: “If you play your cards right, I can talk him into a lot of things.”

It didn’t take me long, even in my tenuous state, to get his meaning. At that moment the tip of his finger grazed over my prostate again,   _dragging_ this time (he knew exactly what he was doing), and I bared my teeth to snarl: “Just fuck me.”

A deep chuckle, just one beat, was my answer before Aomine withdrew his fingers, leaving me physically disoriented and mentally flickering on the shockwaves of anticipation. “Like this?” He asked, placing his hands on my knees.

I thought about it for a few moments. There was something about someone like Kuroko that urged me to watch, examine, and thrive on what guards he let down, the subtle ones that went above and beyond the passion. Aomine, on the other hand, was without defenses. He attacked, even with his words, and he did so in a way that made you feel him long before you had a chance to really think about it.

I took a deep breath and gave him a last parting smile before I turned over and drew up onto my knees. “Nah, like this.”

It was like he’d won a lottery he didn’t even know he was entered in; I heard Aomine actually giggle in an excited, sensual way, and his hands latched onto my hips almost immediately. “Damn,” he said, appreciatively as he palmed my ass and squeezed it with hungry firmness. “ _Damn_.”

“Yeah, I figured you were an ass man.”

He confirmed my suspicions. “And you’ve got a perfect one.”

I preened on the compliment for what it was, and arched my back in a silent cue.

For a minute or two it was like he’d never get the condom on, he was so busy touching me and smacking me – gently, at first, and then I confirmed to him that I didn’t really mind that sort of thing.

He panted through what I could only assume (given my limited viewpoint) were the final moments of preparation, and then told me, “You maybe shouldn’t have given me _carte blanche_ on the spanking, you know.” Before I felt the weight shift behind me and the tip of his cock press up against my ass. “Still want me to take it slow?” He asked, his voice so low and sexy that I spread my knees on the mattress and braced myself just to facilitate my answer.

“No.”

“Christ,” he whispered, and pushed into me. I hesitated at the feeling, tensing at first and then reminding myself that I liked it, this was a _good_ feeling, being so full was only so different because I wasn’t the one in charge. “You are…”

He didn’t finish the comment but I left it up to the hints he threw my way; the way he rocked into me hard, one thrust and then two, a third to seat him completely which actually made me yell, it was so unexpectedly rough. One hand on my hip and the other on my back, he made it a quiet affair, just grunting into his work as he got used to it, got _me_ used to it (the heat, the thickness, the hardness of it throbbing inside of me), and moved in feinting half-thrusts so shallow that they only succeeded in hitting me deeper, tenderly drawing cries out from me.  

It was… extraordinary, to put it in a word. Overwhelming, in another. Somehow it was everything Aomine Daiki had always struck me as, including pretentious and self-absorbed.

“Yeah,” he finally spoke. “Good, isn’t it?”

I didn’t particularly have the capacity to be contentious. “Uh-huh.”

“How does it feel? How does my cock feel?”

I was no poet in bed; Kuroko had already discovered that. “Good.” Though I was sweating and panting with my cock twitching and my whole body reacting to the feeling. “Just keep going.”

He had warned me and so I should have been prepared, but there was nothing to prepare me when Aomine’s palm suddenly came down on my ass, hitting sharply with a loud smack. I yelped and threw my head back, then growled. It had actually hurt; that was no teasing love tap.

Before I could focus on my words enough to get past the stinging aftermath and tell him to watch it, I felt the back of his hand connect on the opposite side, knuckles and fingertips glancing off of the tender skin at high speed before he threw his palm over the opposite side one more time. One-two-three, just like that, and he was still fucking me without losing stride.

I trembled with half-cries between words and then guttered a hoarse moan when it was over, when the throb subsided and the leftover sensation was actually very agreeable, a warmth spreading that tingled and amplified what he was doing inside of me.

It was like he waited to see if I would tell him no, don’t do that again. But I didn’t, and so he repeated the movement, thrusting harder as the act energized him and I hissed at the feeling.

I wondered if he’d done that with anyone else, and then I was powerless to the thought of Kuroko’s pert little ass pinking from the same treatment. It was unlike me to be so turned on by the thought of someone I was dating being plowed by another man, but there it was, a vision unrelenting in my head, and I just gritted my teeth and growled excitedly. Because that man was Aomine, and obviously Kuroko had been thinking of the same thing.

“Hold on,” Aomine said, and my heart nearly bottomed out. Luckily, he didn’t mean ‘hold on’ in such a dire way. He kept going, kept moving his cock, but a bit of shifting was hard to ignore behind me. He kept one hand on my back, now that I was fastened on his cock like a vise. Then, before I knew what was happening, he spoke.

“He’s not picking up,” he murmured. Then, slyly, he added, “Good.” His voice rose in volume and in tone, and he went on. “Oi, Tetsu! Just wanted to let you know…” he paused to pant. “Homework is going well.”

“Homework?” I gasped and tried to turn my head, but couldn’t get my bearings. “Are you _calling_ him?”

He interrupted me before I could protest further, leaning over to add a different (and brilliant) angle to his thrusts, pushing the phone toward my face, urging me smoothly to, “Say hello, Kagami.”

I might have been a little more prudish about it, had Aomine’s hand not moved from my back to my cock, wrapping fingers there and leaving me no choice but to howl. The phone must have been taken away after I did; I couldn’t really tell. All I heard was Aomine saying, “Our Kagami has a tight little ass, you might want to know” followed by the phone presumably hitting the floor somewhere next to the bed.

His hand tightened, his hand quickened. He leaned back over me and our knees bent in together while his hips went on in a fast, shallow, intoxicating rhythm. “Come,” he whispered at me, close enough that I could feel the heat of his breath. “I’m not gonna last so you need to come first, got it?”

I didn’t much like the order I was being given, but in context it was an irresistible one to follow. I wanted to tell him so many things: _no, you come first_. _Faster. Spank me again._ But then I remembered: this was our first time, I wasn’t in a stamina contest, and I had to give myself enough credit for driving him over the edge. I moaned and nodded, screwing my eyes shut and throwing my hips back against him. Aomine seemed to like that; he laughed deeply again and held onto my cock tightly, tugging it in a messy but fascinating rhythm until, with my thoughts bouncing from one extreme of hedonist fantasy to another, I came.

“Yes, fuck, yes,” Aomine gasped, still squeezing me with his dripping hands until I started to whimper uneasily while my cock dribbled its last. His hips didn’t stop. He pushed me on the shoulders, urged my cheek to the mattress, and was humping me like a wild beast when he started to shudder.

Aomine didn’t scream but Aomine cried out, cursing into my shoulder with a softly growling stream of “Fuck, shit, fucking yes, god damn…” as he rode out the wave of his orgasm.

A minute or two passed and we didn’t even say anything. Little by little his weight began to settle on my back, and honestly I was too lazy and euphoric to do anything about it. I allowed him to melt there, and blinked a few times at the sheets against my face, my exhaustion winning out over the uncomfortable heat from his body. I wondered what Kuroko’s reaction would be when he got that message, and felt myself drifting away into a catnap.  


	23. Like a Trebuchet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time to pander to my Basket OTP.
> 
> The AkaMido That Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Fiery Pit of Hellish Angst
> 
> Also it's pretty self-indulgent that I put "London" by Third Eye Blind on my AkaMido playlist FST and this is basically just a whole chapter referencing that song.
> 
> *fans self while sobbing* these two.

“I didn’t take the gig.”

Dr. Mathers was patiently silent as Midorima fidgeted, jaw set tight although he couldn’t stop clicking his tongue ring against his front teeth. A laugh shook his chest, sudden and mirthless. “I didn’t take the gig and it was the perfect gig. I didn’t fucking go to work for my favorite director because I have no control over my life.”

“I want you to evaluate what you just told me and tell me whether you actually believe that, or whether you want me to agree with it.”

He closed his eyes and leaned uncomfortably into his hand, willing the entire situation away. Ten years of therapy and approximately as many therapists; Dr. Mathers was the first one he’d stayed with for more than six months, with regular appointments. And she knew when he wanted to run, when he felt unsafe. It wasn’t that she was able to make him feel that security, exactly, but she’d learned quickly that what worked on him was the tactic of logical discipline.

After a sigh, but with his eyes still closed, he replied (because he’d learned over some time that Dr. Mathers honestly thought highly of him, and she never condescended), “It’s actually true, on a less sensational level. I was given a vague promise based on a future tense contract, and I turned that into a guarantee, and a responsibility to be available. I’ve been backsliding, since I went to Sonoma. Since the… incident.”

“Did you write him the letter, like we discussed?”

“You know, it sounded like a good idea at the time, but the more I thought about it the more I realized it’s not going to help at all.” He’d gotten a new tattoo last week, and wore the sleeves of his shirt rolled up so he could see it. It was a tribute to Godard’s _Masculin Feminin_ , overlapping circles of red and blue making the Eiffel Tower in the center; “masculin” in the blue circle and “feminin” in the red. He’d labored for some time over whether to have “feminin” in blue or red, and finally decided on the latter simply on basis of aesthetic preference.

“How about Takao? Did you write the letter to him?”

They’d decided in his last session that writing was a far easier method of communication, especially when discussing his emotional obstacles; lest his defensiveness be mistaken for aggression, blaming, antagonism. “Yes.”

The pause lasted just enough that she had to prompt him. “And?”

He felt like crying because it all hit him at once, all he’d been bottling up and choking down for at least a week (he’d skipped his last appointment, feigned sick, paid the cancellation fee). But he just took in a deep breath and fought that urge, knew he could get by if he stayed quiet but didn’t know whether the tears would blubber over when he said, “He hasn’t really called me since.”

“It’s going to be emotional, and it’s okay for it to be emotional. But you agreed, and you said you knew, that you aren’t in a position to be emotionally available to someone else right now.”

She pointedly used the word _emotion_ around him, in soft tones, in a positive connotation, to try and smoke out the parts inside of his brain that could still devise emotions as useful for good. “Right now? Try never have been.”

“That’s not your fault.”

“I just keep thinking about her.” When he said that, he always meant his mother, and Dr. Mathers knew. “How she always used to tell me I was okay. When I hurt myself, “you’re okay,” when dad hit me, “you’re okay,” when she called after three months to finally check on me and tell me about the gambling debt, “you’re okay.” It was always that and God, always telling me to just pray and go to church and be good and it would all turn out all right. She never asked how I felt. And if I ever tried to tell her, she didn’t want to hear it. Emotionally available… if I don’t get over that, will I ever be?”

They didn’t talk about his father much. Midorima was not ready to discuss his father. He’d said a few sentences on the subject: “He was strict, he made sure I was up at five a.m. every morning and that the house was spotless before I was allowed to go to school – being allowed out of the house was my reward – and he once made me go to church with a 102-degree fever. I had meningitis. It took the pastor to get me into the hospital. Dad thought I was faking. I don’t care for my father.” And that was all. For now. He knew, and with some trepidation, that she would broach the topic eventually to start picking apart the diagnoses and start down the path to undoing years of damage.

But not yet. She didn’t chastise him for the sudden outburst about his mother, but instead asked him to pause for a moment and breathe with her, because she could see the emotions rollicking out of control, as they often did. Therapy exhausted him; it caused more anxiety than it was worth and became an all-day ordeal, but she always thanked him for coming and made sure that he understood she meant it, that her gratitude wasn’t a matter of course.

“Is the Lexapro working?” She finally asked, late in the hour, even though she wasn’t the one who prescribed his medication. She was the only one who seemed to care whether it was doing anything. He was on a cocktail, and had been since his teens, but never the same one for long.

“It’s all right, I guess.”

Medicine frightened him because he didn’t trust the power it had over his brain, and he theorized often that what his peers called genius was more or less the by-product of a certain level of neurosis. He took the Lexapro, but under protest.

When they ended their session she advised him, as she always did, that it was all a process. He thanked her. He was getting to the point where he meant it.

Rain was starting, which was very strange for L.A., and which he always saw as a portent. He rushed to the car and only checked his phone for any missed messages once he was inside.

A single e-mail message was waiting in his inbox, with the subject line: **Check in now for your flight!**

The ticket, he would later learn, had been purchased just a day prior. LAX to London Heathrow, First Class. Of course he wasn’t doing anything, and that’s why Akashi had slyly worked the question about his schedule into conversation more than two weeks ago. The flight left in twelve hours. At least he didn’t _really_ have a boyfriend to report to anymore, not since spilling his guts about certain things – not things he’d done, mind you, but things he felt, more deeply than he felt about other things and there was the rub – and earning the requisite silent treatment for it.

“Fucking fucktruck.” He threw the phone into the empty passenger seat and rested his head against the steering wheel as the rain got heavier.

London, what the fuck was in London? He wondered and then he got angry, rubbed his face and opened his palms to the air in halting motions as he told himself to “stop”, to “think about this rationally,” but that was just a scam on his own consciousness. Akashi was in London. Akashi was flying him there. Akashi had a plan. He absolutely had to go.

He should have known, of course; Venus was in Scorpio, he’d worn a charm for self-reliance instead of protection against outside influence, and things were about to get complicated.

~*~

A purported first-wave punk in his mid-40’s with two children tapped Midorima on the shoulder at baggage claim to say he liked his plugs. Touching one to remember which ones they were (the moonstone ones), Midorima thanked him and tried to look for something to compliment in return. There really wasn’t anything, and it was only once they got to talking more that Midorima realized he was a perfect example of what happened when you got everything you thought you wanted. “Yeah, mate, I used to have the mohawk, the lip rings, the manky leather jacket and spiked combat boots, all of that.” The blanks were filled in by how the ex-punk presented himself now, in a polo shirt and a pair of khaki pants, long-haired girl playing on an iPad next to him while a slightly older boy looked embarrassed to hear his father talk about such things. Maybe he’d finally gotten a good job with a good company, worked his way into the car and the house and much more respectable things than underground music and delusions of anarchy. Or maybe he just grew out of it.

Waiting for Akashi’s inevitable next text message in the bathroom at Heathrow, Midorima examined himself in the mirror and realized he was doing everything he could to not be able to ever ebb toward conservative again. The tattoos were starting to spread up his neck, and he had an appointment the next week for a dermal on his chest, to dot the “i” in “married” on his centerpiece. _Never become your father, never become your mother, never be satisfied, never settle._ And even with Hollywood and a contact list full of names he could have only dreamed of in high school, there were still chases left. Things he could never turn his nose up at.

His phone buzzed and the noise echoed in the cavernous bathroom. A text message: Invited to a BBC party tonight. Not sure who’s going to be there, not sure if I want to go. Do you want to go?

Where are you? He ignored the question.

In the parking garage, coming in to fetch you.

I just want to sleep.

The flight had been a long one, with a long layover in D.C., and it was just after 9 p.m. in London. Midorima wanted to be put up in whatever hotel Akashi had divined an executive suite from, and not think about anything else until the next day.

His phone rang only a few seconds after he sent the message. He didn’t have photos assigned to his contacts, and he had no idea what photo he would choose for Akashi, anyway. He didn’t like photos being taken of him. He didn’t want to be known for what he looked like, was his rationale. “Hello?” Midorima answered.

“Fair enough,” Akashi began with a sigh. “Maybe I should turn in as well. Where are you?”

He left the bathroom wheeling his suitcase behind. “Heading out of the KLM concourse now.”

“I’ll be there shortly.”

He paused in front a bench but did not sit down. “Why am I here?” He asked. Why had he even hopped the flight, why hadn’t he asked questions first, why anything?

Akashi was silent for a second or two, just long enough that Midorima knew he was calculating, and wanted him to know it. “I just wanted to see you.”

The purposeful vagary made his heart hurt, and a deep-boiling feeling that he shouldn’t be there churned the bile all the way up to the back of his throat. “I’m going to get a drink at the bar, then.”

“We’ll drink at the hotel. Don’t waste money on a ten dollar airport cocktail.”

As if wasting money was something they needed to be concerned with.

The fact that he looked good made Midorima more upset than anything else. It was cold in London and he was sporting a crisp wool suit with a Margiela duster thrown over his shoulders. Dressed for a party, but accompanying Midorima back to the hotel instead. Sitting in the backseat of the taxi cab together, they spoke briefly about the flight and the weather, their conversation staying a polite arm’s length from anything volatile or too interesting.

The hotel bar was unexpectedly full, but they retrieved a couple of drinks (for Akashi, hot tea) and took a table by the rustic fireplace in the lobby. Finally, Midorima said what he had been inferring since the day before. “You want to shoot here.”

Akashi glanced at him sideways, legs crossed jauntily, holding the teacup by its brim between thumb and forefinger. “Is that what you think?”

The rhetorical question, he didn’t dignify with a reply. “So is there a story yet? A framework?” He adjusted his glasses and hazarded a look at Akashi. “Has Kagami delivered?”

“He will,” Akashi said, and paused to drink. “But it doesn’t necessarily mean what you think it means.”

“I don’t have the energy for riddles right now, I’m jet-lagged and…” he tried to find another thing to complain about, but really couldn’t think of anything that fit into less than a full sentence. “Jet-lagged,” he repeated into his glass.

“Finish your drink, I’ll take you up to the room.”

They usually shared a hotel room. It was an interesting thing about Akashi, Midorima had always thought, that he required human presence in order to conduct his life. He didn’t necessarily want to talk to anyone, and he certainly didn’t feel the need to be seen all the time. It was easy to suppose he simply required the spatial relationship, the mere metaphysical feeling that something else was there, something was keeping him from slipping into some as-yet-undefined madness. Like pinching oneself in a dream state, Akashi needed people working on their own realities just outside his scope of vision, to know he was not simply controlling everyone without them knowing it.

Midorima had called it a God complex once, and Akashi just stared at him, flatly retorting, “Do you really want to go down that road? Calling out complexes?”

He retracted the statement and had never really touched on it again.

The top floor of the hotel looked out over the Thames and the Millennium Eye, a million-dollar view in a million-dollar suite. Even Midorima, for all his cynicism, couldn’t help being overwhelmed. Places he didn’t know intimately made him long for new things, even if he could never handle the insecurity of a disordered life. “This is beautiful,” he said, pausing before Akashi turned on the lights, enjoying the spectacle of the brilliant skyline through the windows of the suite.  

“I do want to shoot here, so I was going to drive us out to the country tomorrow to look at some locations. It takes time to acquire the licenses, but I figured I’d have some foresight. The script isn’t finalized, of course, and the story is in negotiation stages.”

“With Kagami?”

Akashi turned on the lights and gave Midorima an indecipherable look. Taking a silent opportunity but also a cue, Midorima stepped over just in time for Akashi to shrug his coat off. He caught the smell of Akashi’s cologne on the Italian wool before he hung it for him.

“With Aomine?” Midorima was skeptical about the thought, but knew the insinuation would draw a response.

“Of course not. Don’t pry about that. Like I said, I’m in negotiation stages.”

“Will Kise be starring? Will there be a role for him?”

They walked down the short hallway and through the magnificently appointed living room, into the bedroom. Hotels in England, Midorima knew from previous experience, were seldom spacious, and even in the luxury ones it was difficult to find two bedrooms. Not that Akashi would have sprung for one, even if he’d found it. He was a bastard like that. Without speaking about it, they claimed their beds and put suitcases where they needed to go.

“Anyone with even a working strategic knowledge of my colleagues should know to write a role for him, but the shooting schedule for _Travelers_ makes it difficult. I’ll explain more on the drive tomorrow. You’re tired now.” The sound of the zipper on Akashi’s suitcase tore through the room.

“I am, but I’m also interested. Because I want to know what to start planning for.”

“Again, we’ll talk about it on the drive.”

Midorima watched him, but Akashi didn’t look over. He took a pair of grey flannel pants from his suitcase and tossed them on the bed, and started to pull off his suit jacket. They were probably what he slept in, not that Midorima had known that sort of detail since their teens. He realized with a strange, nostalgic pang that this would be the first time they’d shared a hotel room in months. “It’s going to be a location shoot, then?”

“A long one,” Akashi said simply, still not looking over. “Longer, if we get picked up. Which we will.”

Midorima rolled his eyes, wanting so badly to throw up his hands and demand information. Always, always it was like this. Akashi knew, but Akashi would say nothing. He liked to see a team work on the balls of their feet, always ready for a mad dash to the next checkpoint. It was starting to give Midorima a headache, but he was also tired from travel and tired from scotch, unbuttoning his shirt in the silence.

“I’m going to take a shower, then.” He pulled the shirt off and started to fold it as carefully as he usually would, but he looked over and saw that suddenly, breathtakingly in all the worst ways, Akashi was watching him. Mismatched eyes flicked down over his body, deliberately noticeable.

Midorima threw the shirt, already wrinkled from the flight anyway, onto the bed. “Listen, if you’re not going to do anything about it, which we both know you aren’t, don’t look at me that way.”

“He broke up with you, didn’t he?”

Already, he was angry for having gotten on the flight, for getting in the car, for assuming he wouldn’t become overwhelmed by his own feelings. But wasn’t that what his therapist was always telling him? To allow his feelings, to talk about them with the people who caused them, to not tolerate those who would not legitimize them? “What do you want from me, Akashi?” He asked, pinching the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses askew.

“No. He didn’t. He’s merely left you on a fishhook. Without that, you’d have already rationalized it.”       

“Stop ignoring what I’m saying.”

“I’m hearing every single word you’re saying,” Akashi said with a suddenly firm tone, almost defensive. _Defensive like a trebuchet._ He paused just long enough before continuing dismissively. “Please go take a shower.”

He did without another word, and Akashi was mercifully not present when he emerged. Midorima could hear the tapping of keys on a laptop from the adjacent room. Akashi liked to work late; they’d been meeting between creative rhythms for years, and ever since middle school he would steal away at the oddest hours with a pen and pad, later a laptop, to take down notes and work out plans. Midorima considered it a good thing for his weary nerves that he was left alone, and saw himself to bed.

11:00p.m. in London. 3:00 p.m. in Los Angeles. A text message chimed through the relative quiet and darkness, reminding Midorima that he’d forgotten to silence his phone. He held it up, close to his face because he was too tired to fetch his glasses from the nightstand.

Where are you? Timing was everything, it turned out. The message was from Takao.

 _Two weeks and you don’t say a word to me, and now you’re suddenly opening with a question? I’ve got a few questions for you._ He wanted to type. But all he managed, all that felt right, was Out of town. He was hesitant to add anything else, and so he left it at that.

That’s cool, I was just gonna stop by so we could talk. If you wanted to.

Midorima thought about it. There was no use in pretending not to receive the message, now. He had to answer. Yeah, that’ll be fine. I’ll be home in a couple of days.

The next texts came one right after the other, at a pace that suggested Takao to be typing his thumbs off, hunched over a table somewhere with an organic quinoa salad, bad posture and thrift store sport coat. I wanted to give you enough time. _Thanks for the mercy, not that I asked for it._ Seems like you have a lot to work through and I don’t want to complicate that right now. _That wasn’t what I meant, but that’s probably for the best._ If you’re emotionally unavailable, I totally respect that. But I want you to know I still think you’re amazing.

Midorima squinted at the screen and stared for some time, processing it all, wondering if that was really the reaction he’d asked for with his overwrought, spleen-venting letter. It probably was. Thank you, he finally typed.

So feel free to turn me down here, lol, but still wanna fuck?

Oh.

There was no way to respond adequately to that with Akashi in the next room and his libido so recently stoked and confused. An immediate answer turned out to be moot, because he waited long enough that Takao followed himself up: I want you. Miss having you inside me, big guy ;)

_Now is entirely not the time, Takao._

Instead, Midorima typed back: Yeah, I still want you.Blunt as could be, simple as could be. No room for emotional misinterpretation. If you want me.

Who wouldn’t? _Oh, I have a few answers to that question but you wouldn’t want to hear them._ I’ve never really done the friends with benefits thing before. 

Me neither. _Really_ neither, considering Midorima had been a virgin when they met.

It isn’t fair that you’re out of town. I’m really horny right now.

There was no turning back. No putting on the brakes, saying “stop, Takao, I can’t do this right now” even though it would have been completely in character. Midorima knew, despite the awkwardness of his locale, that he wanted things to continue exactly on their current trajectory.

And then Takao attached a photograph of himself, hand shoved up in his hair and looking more than a little mischievous. He really was wearing his thrift store sport coat, but his sun-kissed California complexion and perfectly tousled hair reminded Midorima of what he’d been missing. With that, there was a stirring in his lap; he swallowed hard and gave into his more lurid instincts.   

Your mouth.

What about my mouth?

I want to kiss it.

He really did, and it made his heart hurt thinking about it.

Come on, that’s almost sad stuff. That’s not going to help me rub one out between meetings. 

Oh, again.

I’m not good at this. Sexting had never been something he’d considered doing. Not with Takao, not with anyone. You deserve a good fucking and I’ll give you one when I get home. He was embarrassed as soon as he typed it, but sent it anyway.

But it wouldn’t be the same, he knew. They’d never gotten around to I Love You, and now they probably never would. The climb toward it was something that had always made Midorima strive to be a better boyfriend in spite of his litany of faults. Without that, there was really… nothing.

Are you alone? Send me a dick shot.

“No, I will not,” Midorima actually mumbled sternly at the phone before responding with exactly the same words.

The moment he hit send, he realized that he was no longer alone in the room.

Akashi’s figure, small but imposing, was shadowed in the doorway, the dim light from the living room against his back. Midorima fumbled and cleared his throat, laying the phone face-down on his chest so he couldn’t be seen in the screen’s sickly glow.

“How long were you—“

A useless question that was destined to be interrupted. “I’ve never slept with someone else, Shintarou.”

The phone buzzed and chimed against his chest. Midorima set it aside, flicking the mute switch as he did. No need to check it now, not under any circumstances.

“Are you going to get that?” Akashi asked. As always, it was impossible to read his tone, and the darkness made it impossible to know whether any body language was involved as well.

“No. It’s not important.” He paused. “As for what you said, we’ve shared hotel rooms before. If this is bothering you suddenly.”

“I mean I’ve never really shared space in the same bed. Held someone. Been held.”

Nervous because he was still riding a low hum of arousal, Midorima stumbled over what to say, what to do. Though the light was low he could see that Akashi wore no shirt with his plain flannel pants, barefoot and plain in the doorway. What was he getting at? Was it another manipulation, and did Midorima want to get his hands on that body bad enough to try his luck?

After a significant silence and another buzz of his phone on the nightstand (left ignored), Midorima asked, “Do you want to sleep with me?”

“Yes,” Akashi answered immediately, breezily, and padded over to the edge of the bed. “I don’t like that it’s something I haven’t experienced. I don’t like to be lacking, I’ve realized over the last few days.”

“Just get in. I’m tired.” With no clue why he adopted such an impatient tone so quickly, Midorima pulled back the covers next to him and gestured with his head.

The expectation in his mind had been simple: Akashi would slide into bed, settle on his back, fold his arms over his chest and say goodnight. Midorima would be left sleepless for another hour or two, trying to ignore the heat of the body sharing space next to him. Instead, Akashi turned onto his side, away from Midorima, and scooted closer. “Hold me,” he said unequivocally. It was an order.

His body began to move but then he remembered his progress, all he’d been through, the letters drafted and the letters sent. “Wait,” he said, holding himself back. “First I need to know, are you fucking with me?”

Akashi turned his head and looked slightly over his shoulder. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The tone wasn’t as hard to read as usual, because Midorima realized all at once that it was completely naked in its honesty. “Oh my god, you honestly don’t.”

A swirl of confusion swept through the gap between their bodies, and Midorima reached over with one arm to wrap around him. Akashi was slighter even by touch than he was by sight, sinking into the curve of his body as Midorima pulled him closer, daring to fit together with him. He knew his heartbeat was throbbing against Akashi’s back but he couldn’t care. The skin in his arms was soft and cool, the muscles subtle and sinewy where they were apparent at all, and the breath was calm and even. It made Midorima’s unease ratchet up even higher. He took in a shaky breath and nuzzled his nose in Akashi’s hair. No protest was his for that, at least.

 Akashi’s ass pressed against him from behind, locked into the curve of their bodies, and he pushed into it. Just as a test, just to see what would happen. “You have a great ass,” Midorima breathed before he could censor himself.

His mind was already there when Akashi came into the room. He couldn’t force it away from that fixation just to accommodate a tender and potentially devious moment. If he would take anything from the encounter, he would take the physicality.

Akashi was silent and Midorima felt him fist his hand momentarily, a nervous move if ever there was one. He actually squirmed in his arms. “You’re very tall. I never notice that when I’m looking at you. You’ve gotten a lot bigger since we were in school.”

“Sort of.” He hit 6’5” in high school and finally his genes decided to stop grasping for straws. Since then he’d only filled out. Still, Akashi hadn’t shied away from the full body embrace.

“I don’t want people to desire me sexually,” he said, finally, in a very small but very firm whisper. Midorima set his jaw to listen, to take it in. This was a confession, and perhaps the closure he’d been waiting for. “I don’t know why it turns me off immediately, to be wanted like that.”

He did not apologize. “I do. I want people to desire me.”

“And I do desire you.” Midorima’s whole body flooded with heat at the unexpected revelation, and it took everything he had to let Akashi go on without an embarrassing interruption. “I find you highly attractive and enticingly sexual. Probably because you do crave that attention. But when I receive that attention I… cease to trust. So, and forgive me that this is the only window I’ve opened for you, that is why I limit our interactions. Does that make sense?”

He would have to think about the implications of that for some time.

The tone in Akashi’s voice was foreign. It didn’t fit him, and it sounded almost indecipherable to Midorima’s ears. There was humility. There was a modicum of shame, as well. He wasn’t sure he liked it, but decided to allow it. “Put your hand on me, Shintarou. I want to know how your hand feels. Please don’t… say anything about it, but do it.”

No need to be told twice; Midorima opened his mouth to catch his breath and moved below the covers to finger Akashi’s waistband, silently letting the seconds pass in the agony of waiting to have the opportunity retracted. He traced below the elastic, along Akashi’s tight stomach with his fingertips; not a word. His hand reached inside, nothing. He cupped Akashi’s cock through the neat bulge in his Andrew Christians, still no objection.

Biting his lip to keep from gasping or even whimpering, Midorima squeezed him and listened. The quiet was just enough that he heard the minutest hitch of breath, and felt Akashi’s back arch against him. “I may have little patience if it doesn’t feel right,” Akashi warned him, which seemed to be a completely unnecessary thing. Midorima wasn’t confident about many of his sexual talents, but he knew intrinsically that his handjobs were professional grade.

He placed a soft kiss on the back of Akashi’s neck and tilted his head there when he was not rebuffed, kept Akashi’s ass cradled firmly in the crook of hips as the flannels and the briefs were both worked down, leaving skinny thighs bare and a naked cock hard in his hand. All the doubts and all the nagging, hateful, panicky thoughts were pushed out of his head. He had something to prove. His fingers tightened and he circled his thumb slowly on the tip of Akashi’s cock. Eyes closed, he mapped the shape with his touch and locked it away in his mind. Heart beating in his throat, he asked if it felt all right. “You should be wet,” he added bluntly. “It feels better.”

“I know how to jerk my own cock, Shintarou. Thank you. This is fine.”

A few strokes, and he felt confident that his touch would not falter. “Why are you doing this?” He asked, not losing his pace.

Akashi was silent, and so Midorima went silent as well. He let their skin make the conversation, their tiny body cues that responded too well to one another engaged in deviant discourse as Akashi’s breath actually grew shorter and harder, his muscles tighter.

“How large is your penis, Shintarou?” He asked suddenly, voice remarkably even for how fast Midorima was yanking at his cock.

He was stunned, quiet, not sure what to say. Not sure whether decorum dictated that he feign ignorance, or whether he honor Akashi’s trust by saying what he knew quite well. The thing was curving eagerly against him, of course, trapped in the hungry friction between their bodies, so Akashi had his reasons for asking.

“Seven inches,” he mumbled. “You’ve seen it.”

“I have. And I see.” Akashi paused and left Midorima in the intense stew of wondering why he’d been asked. “The rectum is approximately that deep.”

Midorima’s rhythm faltered and his breath gave out. That never happened. “I’m not sure how I feel about this conversation.”

“I’ve never considered anal sex from the receiving side, what it would feel like, how I would handle it. I’m not sure how I feel about the abstract. Like I wouldn’t know what to do. I can’t imagine it would be pleasant.”

He tugged harder, but knew somehow that Akashi was a master at controlling his own orgasms and wouldn’t come until he wanted to, no matter the stimulation at hand. “Akashi. Why do you ask this all of a sudden?”

“The stiffness of your cock suggests that you think I’m reconsidering my stance on the limits of our relationship. That’s not the case.”

Midorima’s heart beat violently; he lurched forward against Akashi’s back, contorting their bodies further in a moment of feral indignation. “Can I taste you?” His voice rasped.

“What would you do if I said yes?”

“Make you come.”

“You’re going to do that already with your hand.” There was cold logic in his words that made Midorima’s passion surge in another twisting wave of umbrage. “Why the fuss? What would be different?”

“I’d throw you on your back and put my mouth around your fucking cock, and once you have someone suck your cock – especially well – you’ll never act so flip about it again, I assure you.”

The letters, the therapy, the boyfriend he had and the boyfriend he lost, the sleepless nights, the fits of insecurity and second-guessing himself because _Akashi_ might not understand, _Akashi_ might think less of him, _Akashi_ infested his mind and his heart at every turn and he _fucking liked it that way_ because it was the only discipline he respected that he knew from without himself.Akashi let him relax precisely because Akashi assumed the role of measuring his every move.

“You sound angry, Shintarou,” Akashi noted, voice wavering finally when Midorima’s fist twisted hard on the slickening head of his cock. He sounded amused, he sounded… _aroused._

 _Yeah. I am._ He thought back to Takao’s text message. “I want you,” he growled into Akashi’s ear. “I want to fuck you until you can’t catch your breath.”

“But you won’t,” Akashi was panting now, and Midorima wasn’t sure which catalyst was most effective to the inevitable end – the physical touch, or the possessive insinuation. “Not until I invite it. Will you?”

He added in a diaphanous whisper after several intense seconds: “I’ll never invite you in.”

Before the teasing and subtext and layers of meaning could be further divined, Akashi let out a soft, wilting cry, curled further into the cocoon of Midorima’s arms, and came into his hand. His body shook gently for a few seconds, reduced like any man to the helpless frenzy of orgasm. Midorima, still hard and still very, very full of designs and desire, just panted and held on, moving his hips to rub himself slyly on the curve of Akashi’s ass. It seemed the appropriate thing to do.

“Stop,” Akashi told him, voice muffled by his shoulder, and Midorima fell immediately still and uncomfortable.

His feelings, however, still churned on undeterred. “I’m going to tell you something really important, and I’ve never told it to anyone before,” Midorima said.

“Don’t.”

“No. I have to.”

“You gave me a handjob, is that worth breaking your heart over?”

Midorima didn’t give himself the time to react before speaking. “I love you. I don’t care.”

“Neither do I.”

A few moments passed in which neither spoke. Midorima was stunned into silence, but not so shocked that he didn’t still tighten his arms around Akashi’s suddenly languid body, pulling him close and smearing the come on his skin where he did. He tilted his head again where it felt best, against the back of Akashi’s head, and breathed as calmly as he could. It wasn’t very.

“You fascinate me,” Akashi began. “That I can say something like that, and you still feel it for me. It’s not about gaining dominion, for you. You really do feel it.”

“I’ve heard worse in my life.”

The silence was punctuated by a moment of genuine feeling. Yes, Akashi knew. He had been there and he knew the secret shames Midorima had suffered during their shared childhood and adolescence, both from wealthy families with completely different methods of abandoning their children. “I’m proud of you.”

“Why can’t you feel it?” The “thank you” was implicit.

Akashi put one uncharacteristically balmy hand on Midorima’s arm where it crossed his chest. “Maybe I do. Maybe I do and it’s so overwhelming all the time that the normal bells and whistles like fluid exchange and romance seem fucked up and pointless.”

“Can you say it? Just please say it.”

“Shintarou.” His voice rose to a stern but soft warning. “We don’t have many moments like this. Can’t we just enjoy it for what it is?”

It was a rare negotiation, so Midorima took it. He was almost to the point where he could grit his teeth through the temptation of his drum-tight erection. The two fell silent and Akashi’s fingers played over Midorima’s protectively draped arm. His pants were still pushed down; he was still naked from the knees up. He managed a chaste propriety of friendship despite it. “Earlier I was looking at your new tattoo. The Godard one.”

“Yes?”

“There’s nothing feminine about you at all. It’s odd to see that word on you.”

“To you.” Midorima smiled in spite of everything else and remembered that, no matter what, once they got through the latest firefight of clashing desires and power games, they would always agree on their own shared intellect. Friendship. Respect underneath it all. “I find myself quite feminine, actually.”

“So wear a dress,” Akashi whispered, almost playfully.

“You don’t even know what you’re talking about. It’s tiring that you’re ignorant on so many things, yet.” He pretended to be exasperated by the topic. “And now I’m more tired than ever, so if you don’t mind I’m going to sleep off this raging hard-on.”

“Do you like sleeping together?”

A stabbing discomfort ripped into Midorima’s heart at the question, because Akashi didn’t mean sex but he also didn’t mean intimacy, exactly. “Stop trying to get in my head. You know I like being close to you, especially when we’re like this.”

_Not fighting, not play-acting, not mounting an elaborate scenario. Just like this._

“I think I like it. It’s agreeable.” Akashi shifted slightly and shrugged deeper into Midorima’s arms, like pulling a blanket tighter across himself. Midorima rested his hand on Akashi’s chest, just over his only tattoo, the one he’d coached him through in high school. They’d held hands while the needle went in, and kept holding hands for the twenty minutes until the word ‘empire.’ was left over Akashi’s heart forever.    

 _Fuck you_ , he thought tenderly, defenses relaxing and heart soaring with the most terribly reckless love. 


	24. Proving Ground

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My time to write has been drastically dwindling. Not only is my big move coming up, so I'm spending a LOT more time working to pay those expenses, but I also have a huge deadline coming up on Intimation, the third book in the Acclamation series, so eeeeeeee~~ when can I write basket A/U? D:
> 
> Thus, I apologize that this is a cliffhanger, but I just couldn't churn out another epic chapter in one sitting. Enjoy these boys being grossly adorable, though! <3

“Because we thought about it. We sat down and said, what makes a story good? I mean, yeah, we approached it from a perspective of shit we liked to read, and tried to make something like that, but we really analyzed what we liked about our favorite stories. Turns out – and tell me this isn’t true – it’s the characters, the uncontrollable things that motivate them, and the way they control or do not control their emotions. The Uncrowned Generals make this story, essentially.”

I’d been trying to keep my voice low as I discussed it, but my excitement had gotten away from me a few times. Aomine had been through two cups of coffee since I started. He was unexpectedly and wonderfully attentive, crossing his legs and listening, nodding occasionally, managing not to become distracted once. He loved stories, it turns out. Stories kept his attention more than anything, even sex, so in between the sex we’d been doing nothing else but writing, and working toward our respective goals.

He was working on a twisted surrealist thing about twins, and I was working on a modern-day fairy tale. In order to fully explain it, though, I had to tell him where I got my inspiration. So I started at Rainbow’s End half past noon, and by three o’clock I’d managed to cover most of the ground laid by the project I’d planned with Himuro years earlier.

“Can you just use that, though? Don’t you need to ask him if you can?”

“I’m going to,” I avoided his eyes, though, and looked back just in time to see him smirk at me around the lip of his cup. “I haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

“You’d better hustle. Your deadline’s in, what, two weeks?”

I’d told him. It seemed better than mounting an elaborate lie to keep him from finding out that I’d suddenly ditched my novel. He wasn’t pleased that he hadn’t been included in the project, but shrugged it off easily enough in favor of writing his next masterpiece. He followed up his vague offense by saying he didn’t like working for Akashi anyway. I could see right through him, but decided not to call him on it. I’d done that enough recently, and would reserve my next poke for something more serious.

“I think the main issue might be the characters – all the Uncrowned Generals, really. Pim, Lesedi, and Orin, they’re Himuro’s characters. I did most of the idea work and really poured my heart into the logistics. Nero, he’s my character. He’s such a fucking trope, though.” I sighed in consideration of the work I needed to do. The plot was as dense as fog in my brain, and just as confusing.

“Give me the pitch again. Worry about the creative rights when you talk to him; you’ve come this far so there’s no use pissing around when you don’t have a backup.” I made a face at Aomine as he gestured at me, and he looked mildly offended. “Hey, trust me, I know what it’s like. Give me the pitch, concise as you can.”

I felt stupid saying it out loud to someone who already knew it. “It’s a story of modern-day royalty descended from times of magic and worlds of fantasy, trying to live normal lives while vying for reign of the underground world of shadows.”

“I’d work on the wording a little, make it sound as gritty and dramatic as it actually is. Right now it could be a dozen other shows. But this has an edge; it’s solid and original. ”

“Thank you.” I’d been most worried about that, about being original. I thought of all the great shows that had been cancelled before their time due to being _too_ original, though, and figured that, like most of the things Akashi was in charge of, the strange symphony of influences would make it strong in style. I only had to worry about the skeleton of substance. The first few episodes, as they’d been planned, already included a trans-continental murder plot, a backdrop of civil uprising in South Africa, and just enough sex to succeed in the ratings. And that was all before the magic came into it. I was confident. Himuro and I had been adamant about not making it cheesy. By Aomine’s account (and I trusted his opinion) we’d mostly succeeded. The kinks were difficult to work out, and that’s where I was struggling. Well, that and the little matter of speaking to Himuro.

Some mornings I woke up with inspiration on my mind; some days I would be in the middle of something completely mundane and be suddenly, overwhelmingly, struck with the perfect idea, the best-formed resolution to a plot or character problem.

Similarly, Aomine hadn’t even said a word to me the day he woke up and left the apartment (my apartment, where he had been spending most of his lazy hours) before me, returning late in the evening with the announcement that he’d been writing all day. “I have it,” he said triumphantly. “I have my novel.”  

Kuroko would walk by our tables some days and ask if we were doing all right. He demanded little attention although I gave it to him anyway, spiriting him away for quiet afternoons and evenings just to touch base with whatever he thought or wanted. “That’s the way he is,” Aomine explained with an unreadable shake of his head. “You’re being very good with him, I think. I mean, I wouldn’t really know, but it seems that way. He seems happy. That’s cool.”

He _was_ happy. He told me so. We still had our time alone, with the house and the bed to ourselves, but even when our duo became a trio, everything went smoothly enough. Aomine attached himself to me for his everyday conversations and domestic upkeep, both organically and in the interest of giving Kuroko a comfortable berth.

Kuroko trusted him with his body, but not with his heart. That was Aomine’s assessment, but it was an accurate one.

Aomine, it turns out, could move between two lovers with intriguing rhythm, and took especially quickly to the concept of being double-teamed. “Despite his posturing, Aomine is very good at fellatio,” Kuroko explained to me. It became a favorite arrangement, then – Aomine on his knees between us or draped sideways over my body, while I filled his ass and Kuroko filled his mouth. I sometimes switched roles with him, much to his delight and Kuroko’s obvious excitement. Thus far (and it had only been a month and a few weeks; I didn’t expect things to move with too much quickness) Kuroko had not allowed nor asked Aomine to fuck him. They kept an intimately measured distance, and Kuroko possessively turned toward me when we all drifted to sleep together some nights. I always slept in the middle. I felt comfortable there.

He was bar lead that day, keeping our cups full and our inspiration assured. It was nearing evening, though, and so late in December the sun was setting even earlier than usual. “I need to head back soon,” I said, looking out the window. “You coming over?”

“If you’re cooking,” Aomine replied. His glasses had slipped down his nose slightly while he typed, and he eyed me over the rims like a strict nanny. I laughed and grabbed at his hand, pulling his arm toward me. Confident that we weren’t being watched by anyone who mattered, I nipped at the skin below his shirt cuff, where his “empire.” tattoo spanned his left wrist. Since discovering it, I paid it some due attention. Usually he wore a watch over it. _“An identity buried by time,”_ he poeticized.

We got along better than I ever expected, and when we had our hashings-out they were as fueled by testosterone and poor judgment as you might imagine. We’d let out all that aggression at once and stay mad until we apologized – never with words, as such, but sometimes with a quick kiss or a squeeze to the shoulder.

“This is healthy,” Kuroko gave a bright spin on the situation on Christmas, while we celebrated with dinner at Riko’s house (most of which I wound up cooking). “I haven’t felt this healthy in a long time.”

We said I Love You that night. Christmas. While it snowed. It couldn’t have been more cheesy, until he grabbed my arm and buried his head in my shoulder, taking a deep breath before telling me, “I don’t want it to be ruined.”

I asked him what he meant, wondering at his sudden shift in tone. I was terrified for a moment that he meant Aomine, but upon further inspection I knew that wasn’t the case. Kuroko stared at me severely and I thought about my contract, my obligation, the people I’d gotten into bed with figuratively as opposed to the people I’d gotten into bed with literally. “Oh,” I said gravely. “You just leave it up to me. I’ll keep you happy. I’ll fight to do it if I have to.”

Momoi was gracious enough to keep Aomine off of our scent after that, distracting him with a discussion about Pablo Neruda while we left the party early and tended to our private bliss for a bit.

Three days later, I wondered what I had in the pantry at home. “I don’t know,” I shrugged. “I can make salmon, I guess. I haven’t made salmon in a while.”

“Sounds good.”

My phone buzzed with a new message and I turned it over. The message was from Kuroko. I glanced up to see where he’d gotten to before I read it, but he was nowhere to be seen behind the bar or otherwise. Kagami-kun, the message read, tonight I’m going to fuck Aomine if you have no objections.

I nearly choked on my soda. Moments later, Aomine checked his own phone and let out a flat “Jesus H. Christ.”

“What? Did he text you the same thing?” I must have sounded mildly hysterical.

“Fucking cocktease.” Aomine melted into his chair, throwing his legs out awkwardly around the table and our chairs. He buried his face in his hands. “Please don’t have any objections.”

I had no idea how to react, and wound up just putting my phone on the keyboard of my laptop, staring at the words until the screen went dark again.

“Well?” Aomine finally shouted, across from me.

“Keep your voice down!” I growled.

He threw his hands up with a bemused look and waited for me to understand his urgency. I understood it, all right. The whole situation had simply come out of nowhere.

The two of you seem to be in a crisis over this; should we postpone that idea?

“Where are you?” I turned in my chair and addressed Kuroko, furrowing my brow as I did.

“I’m right here.” I heard his voice before I was able to zero in on its source.

Kuroko was sitting at the small table directly beside us. As I flailed in sudden realization, Aomine nearly fell out of his chair. In unison, we shouted, “Don’t do that!”

Kuroko shrugged, holding his phone. “When the two of you are focused on each other, it’s difficult for me to stand out.” He didn’t seem bothered by this, though, as he edged his chair toward me.

A few moments of recovery was all it took, as I rubbed the back of my hot neck and avoided eye contact with either of my lovers. “If you want to do that tonight, I mean… if that’s really what you want, I wouldn’t say no.”

“I find it interesting, Kagami-kun, that you’re trying to sound like you’re not excited by it.”

“Because we’re in public!”

“Oi, Tetsu.” I rolled my eyes, and reached over to flick Aomine in the forehead. He knew I hated it when he interrupted with those exact words every time he wanted Kuroko’s attention. He grabbed my hand and pulled it aside, not even fazed by the move. “Why this all of a sudden?”

“Is it really all of a sudden? I think it’s a logical step.”

Aomine shrugged. He was almost swaying, with that little drunk-on-his-own-smugness smile on his face. “I suppose.” Then he pointed at me. “Can you suck me off while he does it? That’s always been a fantasy of mine, getting blown and fucked at—“

“ _We are in public!_ ” I reiterated very loudly, holding up my palms in a halting motion.

A few seconds passed.

“Okay, well now everyone is actually looking at us. They weren’t before,” Aomine mumbled, sliding completely back into his chair.

Kuroko patted my back, which helped to calm my humiliation a bit. “I get off at seven o’clock. Go home and make dinner. Then we’ll have a nice evening.”

I rolled my eyes again. “You two are depraved, you know that? I never expected it from you.” I looked at Kuroko and pretended to be cross. My eyes softened nevertheless, just looking at him.

“Kagami-kun, you’re cute when you pretend like I’ve not always been the horny one.” He leaned up to kiss me quickly as Aomine chuckled. He added, “I love you.”

“I love you,” I mumbled with an unavoidable smile and a slight blush.

~*~

I went about cooking and Aomine went about telling me to hurry up, as if doing so would speed up time itself. He was already restless moments after Kuroko left us to return to work, and by the time I was grilling the salmon he was behind me in the kitchen, pawing at me and kissing the back of my neck.

“Annoying,” I informed him, swatting at his head. “Are you more horny than hungry?”

He thought about it. “Don’t ask tough questions. Hungry.”

“Then sit down and wait for the food to be ready. Only the chef is allowed in the kitchen, that’s our rule.”

“Why didn’t you become a chef?” He asked me, content for the time being to sit at the bar and crack peanuts open. “You’re really good at it.”

I shrugged. “Because writing is what called to me. It’s funny, it’s like I wanted to be an athlete, and then I wanted to just write about sports, and then I just wanted to write. That’s where I am now, but there was some progression there.”

“You’re brave,” he said, seemingly out of nowhere, looking at the wall with his chin in his hand.

There didn’t seem to be an adequate reply. “Can you hand me the baking dish so I can put the potatoes in?” I asked softly. Aomine was on his feet instantly, grateful for the distraction.

He watched me silently for some time, and once I hadn’t heard a peanut shell cracking in a couple of minutes, I wondered what he was up to. When I turned around, he tilted his head oddly at me. “Are you really okay with this?” He asked.

He meant what was about to happen with Kuroko just as soon as we’d all eaten and undressed each other. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Aomine shrugged. “I don’t know. It seems weird, like this whole time, great as it’s been, Tetsu’s been really distant from me. And now that gap is narrowing – okay, maybe not emotionally, but definitely physically – and I wonder if you’re cool about that.”

“You know why he’s distant from you, I’m assuming.” I left the sauce to simmer as I turned to face him, going so far as to walk toward the bar and lean over it, getting close, lowering my voice to a more intimate level.

“Tetsu needs someone he can rely on. Someone who’s, you know, _up_.” He raised a hand and made a little visual aide of what he meant. “I was down. I was down a lot, not on myself but on everything. I figured as long as the sex was good there was nothing to a relationship but someone to share space with, you know? I didn’t hold him in the regard he deserved. I was dumb.” He shrugged in a quick, embarrassed way. “But it’s all for the best. It taught me what I really needed.”

“And what’s that?” I reached over and, not looking him in the eyes, traced a finger over his hand.

“A blond…” he said in a sing-song tone, and I pulled away to laugh and shove him back playfully. He chuckled deeply and went on. I knew I had nothing on Kise Ryouta, in Aomine’s heart, but he was a lost cause if he wasn’t kept focused 24/7. The challenge was giving him things to focus on. I was a thing. So was Kuroko. So was his writing. And he didn’t have to go into lethargic stretches wondering if he was focusing on the right thing, that way. Meanwhile, Kise got to go about his hectic life, deciding what exactly (if anything) he wanted to do with Aomine’s not-yet-professed but implicit love. Also in the meantime, Aomine got to grow up. “No, I’m being a bastard. Um, I needed tough love. Rivalry, I guess. To keep me on track.”

“Are we rivals?”

Aomine focused on me with a dark, probing stare. I was half-tempted to reach across the bar and pull off his fake glasses, but remembered that dinner was definitely to come first. “Time will tell,” he said deeply.

I thought little of it, and leaned far enough to kiss him once before the timer on the oven began to beep.


	25. That Song from Reservoir Dogs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WOW, HI GUYS, Hi. Hi I've been gone for a long-ass time and I'm sorry, but this story isn't dead! I just ran into a long rut of lazy certainty that I simply could not write porn. That said, I still don't feel 100% on top of my game, so if you enjoy this at all, please let me know? Like, it would really mean a lot because I've been a walking Linkin Park lyric these last few weeks and it suuuucks.
> 
> KuroAoKaga porn here, basically

The time I took with the cooking turned out to be unnecessary. I could have bought cheap oven pizzas and everyone would have been just as pleased. Kuroko, upon his arrival, thanked me for the food but had little more to say, especially when Aomine instructed him to “eat quickly.”

“That’s not a good idea, Aomine. We’re going to be very active. We should give ourselves time to—“

Aomine interrupted. “Shut up and eat! You’re a cocktease.”

Throughout the meal (and I should have expected as much) Kuroko proceeded to drop little breadcrumbs of sexual suggestion, albeit in his usual way. There were none of the requisite remarks on how expertly prepared dinner was, and to be honest I didn’t really care. All I could think of was the main event. Almost begrudgingly, at some points. For instance, when Kuroko stopped chewing for a moment to turn and ask Aomine whether he wanted to be warmed up with a vibrator. It prompted Aomine to drop his fork on his plate and look at me, reading my stunned expression as a silent agreement that, yes, my boyfriend was being nothing but a little cocktease.

“I’m finished,” Kuroko finally said, pointedly taking his last bite several minutes after Aomine and myself. The deliberate and frustratingly unorthodox nature of his seduction was perfect, of course, and Aomine was on his feet within a moment. Kuroko didn’t even glace at him, but caught my eyes for a hungry instant that rooted my feet to their spot. I breathed out heavily through my nose.

I managed to move once both were already in the hallway and probably in the bedroom. When I caught up, Aomine was already pulling off his v-neck, and Kuroko was standing to the side of the bed, casually unbuttoning his shirt as if preparing to sleep. Unsure of what to do (I felt like I was the third wheel, for once), I stayed in the doorway and scratched my elbow, clearing my throat only after the silence began to feel uncomfortable.

“Have the two of your considered our blocking?” Kuroko asked gently, importantly, shrugging out of his shirt to reveal the tight white undershirt beneath. I didn’t feel like I was allowed to move forward, somehow. It was strange how he’d taken control without really saying a word. Even Aomine just stared at him, and with a flick of his eyes deferred to me for a response.

“Blocking?” I snickered. “No, I mean, it’ll just happen like it normally does, won’t it?”

Kuroko turned to Aomine. Again, like it was a business transaction. Something about the way he presented everything so sensibly was becoming an unexpected turn-on as our relationship grew. “Aomine?”

Aomine laughed breathily and gave an automatic response. “Given the option, I’m gonna be on my back.”

“Oh you’ve thought about it, huh?” I asked, stepping into the room. My hands went for my belt and Aomine’s eyes followed the noise.

“Yeah,” he replied, incredulous. “Easier for you to blow me, I figure.”

“Potentially,” Kuroko interjected.

I was beyond being put off by half of the unexpected machinations of their dirty minds, and couldn’t say I objected to the possibility. I pushed my jeans down and stepped out of them, walking toward Kuroko. On the way Aomine quipped, “I still can’t believe you’re gay when you wear those underwear.”

“You wear boxer shorts, too!” I snapped, reaching out for Kuroko.

“They’re boxer briefs,” he corrected me, jutting one hip out purposefully to highlight his point. I rolled my eyes and moved my arms around my boyfriend, only to feel his hands encircle my wrists when they passed his waist. Puzzled, I looked down at him.

“Kagami-kun, start with Aomine,” he nearly whispered. “I want to watch you two together first.”

I lowered my arms but leaned in for a kiss nonetheless. That, he didn’t object to. “Okay,” I replied, smirking. “Any special requests?”

“Put your fingers inside of him.” Kuroko brushed his lips past my ear. My blood ran hot for a moment. I swallowed hard, and accepted the mission. It’s not like I hadn’t done it before, but the idea of Kuroko watching intently… the idea of Kuroko fucking Aomine… the idea of Kuroko fucking _anyone_ …

I was partially grateful that it wasn’t me.   

We kissed deeply before I turned toward the bed and found Aomine waiting, thumb crooked into the waistband of his boxer shorts (ahem, pardon me, _boxer briefs_ ). “I heard that,” he grumbled.

“Shut up.” I smiled just below the surface of my gruffness as I pushed him onto the bed.

Aomine liked to be on his back. He liked to be serviced. He liked to be ridden and he liked to be lazy. Our first encounter had, sadly, been the only one in which I experienced his actual power from the receiving end. However, I couldn’t argue with the fact that he looked very, very good laid out on top of the covers, just _expecting_ me.

I crawled over him and we began to kiss, intense from the first touches. We’d learned early on that neither of us dealt in the sweet and measured, at least not with each other. Our lips crushed together and Aomine grabbed my hand to put it on his cock within seconds. I didn’t object, and balanced myself as well as I could. My eyes opened while I worked his briefs over the hips, and I couldn’t help the arrogant glare I gave Kuroko. We only looked at each other for a moment or two before Aomine grabbed my face and pulled it back to his full attention, growling “Kiss me,” under his breath.

“Turn him this way,” Kuroko asked, just firmly enough that I heard him over the hard breathing in my burrow of lips and skin. “On his knees.”

Aomine whined in disappointment, though he melted into my efforts to reposition him.

“It’s only for now,” Kuroko said, his voice calm and reassuring though I could pick up on the hint of self-satisfaction in the tone. “You’ll be well taken care of.”

“I thought you liked being looked at,” I whispered at Aomine, noticing the sour look on his face as he settled onto all fours, ass held high and proud. “Loosen up.”

“That’s your job,” he snapped at me.

I just laughed and went to work. I’d explored this territory before, of course. I was less enthused by the tasks than Aomine when he did the same to me, but there was still something very arousing about the way he whined and grimaced a bit whenever I twisted my finger in past the knuckle, or added a second, or even suggested adding a third. He was timid, all told, when he was being penetrated. No matter the situation, Aomine held his pockets of vulnerability close to his chest, so I felt privileged and more than a little victorious to be witness as he let go.

“Are you still considering the vibrator?” I whispered, shielding our conversation from Kuroko as a simple tactic at riling up Aomine even further. My fingers slid deeply inside of him, and I spread them against the tight resistance I felt. He grunted. “You’ve seen mine; it’s a big one.”

“Save it,” he grunted again. “Fuck yourself.”

“You’re getting sloppy in your insults. Loss of oxygen flow?” I squeezed his cock to illustrate my point.

“Fuck!” He cried, and panted down at the mattress. “No, I mean literally. Fuck yourself. While Kuroko’s--”

The idea barely had time to take root before I felt fingers slide up through my hair and pull my head back. Kuroko’s body heat warmed me as he slid into the tangle of our limbs and whispered between us: “Break it up. I’m ready.”

I refused to be disregarded so easily. “No, you’re not.”

He could be the puppet master if he wanted, but I didn’t have to obey _every_ whim. He was already naked, and he was already hard, and it was beyond me to let him go forward without marking just a bit of my territory. The mattress moved in unsteady shifts of weight as I lunged at Kuroko, grabbing him around the waist and sinking down to put my lips around his cock. I had no intention of bringing him close; that would have been unfair to Aomine (who was presently making the whole situation quite an ordeal by flipping onto his back, sending the mattress in waves of movement beneath my already-precarious position).

“Aomine, don’t move around so much,” Kuroko warned him breathlessly. I used the window of stillness to take most of Kuroko into my mouth, sucking back on him greedily.

“It’s not my fault he needs a better mattress.”

“Shut up.”

“One of those Sealys where you can like, bowl on one side and it doesn’t—“

“Stop talking.” Kuroko’s fingers tightened in my hair and I heard him give the beautiful vibrating sigh he only let out when he was feeling very, very good.

“Oi!” I knew that one was for me. “Stop being greedy.”

He was considerate enough to only nudge me in the ribcage with his knee, though I knew he could have done much more damage. Maybe he was getting better at thinking. I pulled off of Kuroko’s cock proudly and looked up at him, my mouth still open and my eyes heavy. He stared back at me and we both disregarded Aomine for a moment.

I didn’t feel jealous at all. In fact, I winked. Kuroko showed me the smile he so rarely let slip, and I could swear he was trying to conspire silently with me. I had nothing on my mind but his taste and the heat of his bare skin, so I hope he didn’t expect me to glean whatever he was projecting.

“Aomine had a good idea,” he remarked, calm as ever while he stroked his cock a few times and turned to point it at Aomine. Aomine chuckled in deep self-satisfaction, spreading his legs in a particularly imperious display. “Get the things I need, and while you’re at it, grab the vibrator.”

My eyebrows crept up my forehead. The pace had picked up quicker than expected. As I bent over to reach for my bedside drawer, I felt Kuroko’s palm cup my ass gently. It wasn’t a quick, mischievous move, either. He was giving me a good, solid grope. I tossed a condom back at him and glanced over my shoulder. “Just comparing,” he explained when he caught my eye. “But Aomine still needs to go first.”

“Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?” Aomine snarled. “Come on, Kuroko, I’m fucking dying here.” Always the showman, he tossed his head back and rubbed a hand over his bare neck and chest. He opened one eye to make sure I was watching him. “And you’d better get your mouth ready.”

I left the lube in Kuroko’s talented hands and lunged over Aomine, aiming for his lips to begin. The only way to shut him up sometimes, I’d learned, was to kiss the hell out of him. Of course, that’s exactly what he wanted me to do. His hands grappled my back strongly while I hummed into his mouth and waited for Kuroko.

To accommodate the movement as Kuroko lifted Aomine’s hips, I re-oriented myself, still kissing ferociously as I considered watching. Part of me wanted to see Kuroko’s cock slide into him, and the other part of me just wanted to keep my mouth on Aomine’s, to feel every moment of reaction as it passed through his throat.  

Aomine’s breath hitched beneath me, and he tensed. My lips curled to smirk against his. “Loosen up.” I wanted to be a smartass, but my tone was unexpectedly sweet when I spoke. I pulled away from Aomine momentarily and we looked at each other. His brow knitted and his lips fell open in a short panting breath. “Wow. You look so fucking gorgeous right now.” It was different to see his face in that moment when I wasn’t the one doing all the work on the other end.

His eyes closed slowly and he moaned with a ragged urgency, veins in his neck pulsing for a moment. A hand curled into my hair to pull me forward again. “Is he inside of you?” I asked in a whisper.

Aomine just nodded, eyes still closed, and crushed our mouths together once more. We turned our heads this way and that, kissing and then tearing away and then meeting once more, breathing hard, teeth bared with tongue seeking tongue. Beneath me, I felt the rhythm of movement as Kuroko began to fuck him. Of course, he said nothing. Aomine, however, dragged his wet lips up to my ear to gasp: “Suck my cock.”

The whole scene around me was disorienting. I’d been so lost in the heat and intensity of Aomine’s kisses that turning my head to see the rest of the picture took some moments of acclimation. My eyes followed the lines of his abdomen, but I wasn’t content to stop at his cock. The break between dark skin and light, where Kuroko held Aomine up by the knees, a strange wishbone frame that made him look larger and more powerful than I’d ever seen him. He was focused almost entirely, jaw set seriously as his hips moved in long rolls of movement. I was surprised he came out of the concentration long enough to notice I was watching, but when he moved his eyes to me, mouth open to take a deep breath, muscles in his arms and shoulders flexing to hold the pose, he was perfect.

“Fuck,” was all I could say.

Without my mouth to muffle his cries, Aomine was gasping in time with every thrust from Kuroko. If you think for a moment that it’s easy to get used to paying attention to two beautiful dudes in bed at the same time, without completely forgetting one exists occasionally, I don’t know what to say to you. “Kagami…” He urged me, guttural and languid.

“Oh, yeah,” I mumbled, shaking my head in sudden recollection. “Let me help with that.”

Kuroko fell to his knees, cradling Aomine’s hips in his own to give me a more level work space, as it were. “Let’s take it easy for a bit,” he sighed, wiping his forehead. “How does that feel?”

“Hey, let’s just be perfectly honest here: I like having a dick in me.” Aomine, I could tell, was still trying to be as courteous as Aomine was capable of being with regards to my boyfriend.

My hand was already around his dick, but I turned a stern face to Aomine in time to say, “That’s all you can offer, you ungrateful fuck?”   

I squeezed the tip of his cock slightly and he jerked his hips toward my fist. “Shit…” he breathed, staring at me with a plainly amused expression. “It feels great. Kuroko knows what he’s doing in there.”        

“I’m out of practice,” Kuroko added, still rolling his hips lazily into Aomine for a closer, more shallow thrust that sat as deep inside as possible. I groaned to watch him doing it. I wanted – and this surprised me – to know how it felt.

We kissed before my mouth wandered lower. “Tease,” I whispered at him. “I love you.”

Aomine groaned ecstatically when I closed over his cock, sucking on the tip immediately to drive home the full potential of the feeling he’d been fantasizing about. My attention was split between the sound of his reaction and the sound of Kuroko fucking him, and both did a great job of building my own desires.

“Aomine-kun,” Kuroko began softly, his breath still just short enough to be sexy as hell. “Tell Kagami how talented he is.”

My head swam in excitement as I sucked back hard on Aomine’s shaft, tonguing his slit just in time to hear his voice. “The only compliments I can think of are rap lyrics. This feels fucking amazing.”

I couldn’t have even predicted he knew any rap lyrics, but it made me chuckle around his considerable girth. Proudly, I twisted my head and took him as far into my throat as I could, showing off my skill. I had to strut a little before my control was compromised. Speaking of which…

“Kagami’s been very good to us both.” Kuroko’s voice was silky and savage, the dulcet tone obvious in its mask over his true intention. “Let’s return the favor.”   

I came up from Aomine’s cock with a gasp when I felt his hand slide up the leg of my boxers to grab my ass. Something was incredibly sexy about being touched underneath my clothes, or maybe that was my inherent modesty. Regardless of the reason, my cock twitched to attention at the feeling, and I whimpered.

“Oh, I’ll take care of that,” Aomine said, fingers stealing between my cheeks as he did.

Kuroko held him up by the knees again, this time tossing Aomine’s feet over his shoulders. The pace was strong and unrelenting, but Aomine managed the dexterity to undress me, slick up his fingers, and push them inside of me. I stretched out toward Kuroko, looking up at him while I was being prepared. “You look like you’re going to cry, Kagami.”

“Does he?” Aomine grunted. “Damn, I miss the good stuff.”

“You chose your end!” I reminded him sharply.

“I’ve not had the pleasure of seeing you like this,” Kuroko added, pounding into Aomine just a bit more fiercely as punctuation. “Usually you’re sucking me. You have a very different look on your face, then.”

I liked being between them. Having Kuroko to put my hands and mouth on was always a way to channel all that nervous, modest energy that seemed to coil up inside of me when I was put on display. I felt naked in an emotional as well as literal sense, especially when Aomine pulled his fingers out with grave and deliberate slowness and asked, “Ready?”

“He’s nodding,” Kuroko informed him. I wasn’t quite sure what to say.

“Kagami! Talk to me, unless you want to switch before he—“

“We’re fine, Aomine,” Kuroko interrupted him, firmly even though I saw a tiny smile tug at his lips when he said it.

“Oi, Tetsu…” I was too interested in whatever Aomine had to say to speak up and ruin his perfectly timed dramatic pause. Even when he pressed the tip of the vibrator against my ass, I kept quiet. “You haven’t said much besides ordering us around. How is it for you? Enjoying yourself?”

“I enjoy the two of you looking the way you do right now. And yes, Aomine, in case you’re wanting me to state the obvious, your ass is quite satisfying.”

I took a deep breath and Aomine twisted the vibrator to push it in further. “Good.”

We fell into a communication of rhythm and non-verbal cues, though the grunts and moans and slapping skin that occasionally entered the conversation helped regulate things very nicely. I reached over, feeble as my balance seemed once Aomine was fucking me at full tilt, and grabbed his cock to match the pace. I was only jerking him for a minute or so before he slammed the vibrator in to its base, leaving it to hum deep inside of me as he swore to announce his orgasm. “Fuck!” He kept his palm pressed hard against the back of the toy, and I swallowed hard on the feeling of it even as he twitched in my palm and covered my fingers with come. Opening my eyes, I saw his toes pointed and curled, his legs lifting off of Kuroko’s shoulders in the most crucial moment of ecstasy.

“Oh…” Kuroko’s voice rose above even Aomine’s fevered panting, and I recognized the flush in his cheeks. We met eyes. “Aomine, you look beautiful when you come.” But he was looking at me when he said it.

“Close, Tetsu?” His legs dangled limply from Kuroko’s arms for the next few seconds. Kuroko didn’t really respond. Aomine started to move the vibrator lazily in and out of me again, not really playing at any rhythm as much as he was simply teasing me. My eyes weren’t going anywhere, and neither was my attention. As hard as I was, as sensitive as I was, I was only concerned in that moment with watching Kuroko come while he was inside of Aomine.

And then… he didn’t. He looked at me for half a second before he let Aomine’s legs drop to the bed, and I heard the seal between their bodies break wetly as Kuroko pulled out of him. Confused for only a moment, and mostly because of the distraction that sexual abandon wrought, I watched silently as Kuroko peeled his condom off, tossed it aside, and moved closer between Aomine’s legs while he stroked himself.

I wanted to look back and follow the line of Kuroko’s eyes, which were fixed on Aomine’s. None of us said a word. Even Aomine didn’t have a sparking slice of wit to offer as Kuroko’s teeth clenched subtly, his chest filled with a magnificent breath, and he moaned. His stomach tightened and rolled with a sigh, and he shot directly onto Aomine’s body. A pale line cut through his dark skin, from chest to abdomen, and Kuroko looked down at it, running out of breath and pumping himself until he was spent. It was a glorious sight, if I’d ever seen one.

Aomine pulled the vibrator out of me.

“Ah!” I clamped my eyes shut at the feeling. Aomine chuckled.

“I can’t help feeling that was very symbolic,” Aomine said, carelessly sticking his fingers right back inside of me, tormenting the distended tenderness of my hole. I whined and tried to turn it into a growl as soon as I caught myself, until I was distracted yet again by Kuroko’s voice.

“Do you want to kiss me, Aomine-kun?”

Aomine’s fingers stopped moving in me. “Yeah,” he said after a beat. “May I?”

He wasn’t asking Kuroko. I didn’t need to see his face to know that. “Yeah,” I answered.

Unsure of what was happening, and only knowing that I was tense and quivering and emotionally compromised, I wasn’t entirely thrown off when I didn’t hear Kuroko shift toward Aomine, but rather felt him reach down for me. He pulled me by the shoulder, and before I knew it we were a tangle of limbs and bodies again, moving around one another, sweat and come rubbing here and there until I was on my back again.

Kuroko crouched low over me, his mouth almost on my twitching cock before he glanced over. “Help me, Aomine-kun.”

Their lips met, and those wet, hot lips traveled down to attack me from both sides. I so desperately wanted to hold on, to turn back time and erase the foreplay that had already rendered me a hair trigger, but the sight of Aomine’s tongue and Kuroko’s lips, both traversing and aggressively exploring my cock, my balls, sucking and licking and nibbling...

I wanted to say someone’s name, but couldn’t decide whose. At the last moment I just gasped “I love you,” before I let out an inarticulate cry, and kept my eyes open to see Kuroko with his lips around me, hungrily swallowing me through my orgasm. I closed them just as soon as that image burned into my mind.

The hot weight of another body fell on top of my chest, and Aomine’s mouth kissed the corner of mine. I turned into his kiss, and by the time Kuroko crawled up to nuzzle the crook of my neck from the other side, we were all tired (Shocked? Satisfied?) to the point of speechlessness.

A calm of post-coital euphoria set in, and I opened my eyes to stare at the ceiling. I was backwards on my bed, facing from the wrong side, but somehow that seemed fitting. It was strange, how a barrier felt broken. It wasn’t as simple as widening sexual and romantic territories, and it certainly wasn’t all about how I perceived Kuroko. Emotionally, intellectually, beneficially – whatever assessments I’d made about the men in my life (and in my bed), the strangest thing was how those small and monumental barriers kept breaking down in quiet ways, in unexpected ways. Bangs and whimpers, both.  

I was ready for a nap to take over before we all cleaned up, got dressed, righted ourselves on the bed, decided how many people would share it or return home. Just before I drifted under the ecstatic thrall of slumber, I heard my cell phone ringing in the next room. I’d assigned ring tones long ago, when I had a job that benefited from screening calls. This was Alex’s ringtone. One ring… two… three…

“Shut up!”Aomine snarled. Mercifully, it did.

I tried not to panic. A minute later, I heard my voicemail notification.

The jig, as they said, was up, and I wasn’t about to sleep when I had more important things to do. Like think of a way to explain to my editor that I wasn’t even working on a novel anymore.


	26. Courvoisier and Triumph

Alex, it turns out, was harder to read about the situation than I’d expected. She took my explanation silently, even when I babbled over my planned excuse and wound up spilling the secret about my involvement with Akashi, amidst frequent exclamations of “oh shit!” and “you can’t tell anyone!” Eventually she gave me a long, disappointed sigh.

“I’m just glad you didn’t fall down the relationship rabbit-hole and forget about your professional responsibilities.”

“Nah.” I shrugged. “It’s a constant battle, but I do a pretty good job of resisting temptation.”

Alex laughed brightly and I could swear I heard her slap a thigh. “That’s a good one. That’s a good one, I’ll have to remember to tell that at parties.”

“Easy!” I warned her, but just rolled my eyes and chuckled along.

She didn’t grill me about Akashi, which suggested she’d already resolved to forget about it, and, being my editor, she offered to take a look at my work and be a second set of eyes. “Not likely.” The truth made me wistful. I missed Alex’s expert advice, especially on my language and structure, both of which I tended to misjudge when I self-edited. “Contract says, no one can see. The frame and pitch are vital, but after that it’s all up to Akashi’s team of writers and editors. I’ll be a creative contributor, as creator, possibly a staff writer. But no. Negative. No outside assistance, no outside opinions. Not yet.”

The next question was the crucial one. “So what is it about? Can you at least tell me that?”

It wasn’t worth it to even stutter and skirt around what was already obvious in my mind. If anyone wouldn’t judge me, it was Alex. “Remember _Bloodlines_?” It had been a working title, and a shitty one at that, but we’d been in high school when we thought of it.

She sighed, paused, laughed very softly. “I couldn’t forget.”

“I need to contact Himuro, of course, and a lot’s going to be changing. I mean, obviously the original plot had its silly, problem elements, but—“

“You haven’t talked to Himuro yet?” She cut me off with a suddenly barbed tone. “Your deadline’s in, what, a month? And you haven’t talked to him, yet? Kagami Taiga, hang up the phone right now and call him.”

“I was going to call him today!” I started to protest.

“Hang up the phone right now and call him, or I can’t be expected not to accidentally-on-purpose send you nudes when I’m drunk. Which is soon. I’m drinking now. _Do you want titties on your iPhone, Kagami?_ ”

I hung up, flustered, without another word. Ultimatums were rarely so effective with me.

I decided to pour a drink for myself before I sat at the breakfast bar in my apartment and dialed Himuro’s number. I half-expected him to be screening calls, on tour, unavailable, or just disinclined to speak to me. I would have understood any of the former things, and would have expected the latter. The comforting woody taste of gin slid down my throat on the first ring, and on the third I considered hanging up. Then, the impossible happened and a voice actually answered me.

“Hello?”

“H-Himuro?” I asked, certainly sounding confused.

“Is this Kagami?” He sounded pleasant enough, if mightily (and rightfully) amused by my tone of voice.

“Yeah! Yeah it is, how are you? Is this a bad time?”

“Bad time? Nah… just catching up on some TV while I’m at home for a bit. Chillin’. How have you been, man? Haven’t talked to you since… was it October?”

“November, I think? Early November.”

“Wow. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

It was no use trying to wrap the true nature of my call in a candy coating of social concern. “Something of a professional inquiry, actually.”

“Ah! So that’s what it takes to get you on the phone?”

Tension tied me in a knot and I was struck dumb for a moment or two. He broke the nervous silence with a barking laugh. “I’m just kidding! God, I’m totally kidding. What’s up?”

“Bloodlines.” I said it so bluntly because I hadn’t rehearsed it; I hadn’t thought of anything beyond dialing the number and finding my voice. He was still comfortable to me. Talking to Himuro was like slipping on a favorite old sweater, but unfortunately it was also like doing so in the middle of July. I knew I wouldn’t be able to stand it for long. So I launched right into things, and lost my voice again directly after.

“Wow,” he breathed in my resultant silence. Surely he didn’t have to be so close to the receiver. Surely I didn’t have to hear him sigh so deeply, so warmly. “It’s been a while since I’ve even thought about that.”

Before guilt could intercept any good intentions and mangle them up into emotional commitments that were already long gone, I agreed with a grunt and went on. “Not me. I’ve been thinking about it a lot for the last few weeks, actually.”

I heard the chair he was in creaking as he pondered my statement for a moment or two. “Okay.”

And that, I understood, was my cue. I dove into the story, using Kuroko as a launching pad to introduce Akashi, using Murasakibara as a linchpin to tie it back to Himuro. Make it relatable. I was actually rather good at telling a story (it came with the territory), and by the time I was explaining the meeting in Sonoma and some (very) vague details of the project’s magnitude, Himuro was chuckling.

I wished I could see his eyes. Knowing he was laughing was nothing unless I could see whether his expression was syrup or strychnine. “Okay…” He restated, bringing the whole thing full circle.

“I’m going to be up front: I want the story.”

I wasn’t in the mood for compromises, and I was sure they never entered Akashi’s business ledger once he knew what he wanted.

The shrug was implicit in his tone. “The story’s practically yours, anyway. I was always only good at characters.”

“The characters, too. That’s what I mean. Orin, Pim, Lesedi. They have to be in the story, and they’re yours, but—“

“Taiga.” He sighed; it sounded almost empty. “Do you even know why I wrote like that?”

I didn’t want to venture a guess, because I knew the question was nothing more than a preamble. I was happy when he lifted the spotlight off the silence and went on. “I just wanted to do something with you. It was fun, you know? I never wanted to do it for a living. I mean, at most I entertained the thought that we’d go into it together. But I always felt sort of like a fraud, you know? Deep down. Because it was never as exciting to me as it was to you.”

“But it came so easy.”

“It did! But this… what I’m doing now… songs, man. Music and lyrics, that’s more my speed. It’s like a chance to do everything all at once for me. I don’t want you to feel like I don’t think what we did was worth anything, but I always sort of knew it was just you, who was carrying that weight. The creative burden.”

“But you came up with so much! The Deus system, that plot twist between Lesedi and Honor! That was you!”

“It came easy, like you said. And… you know, to be completely honest, I liked to see what you did with it. All it took was one corner of an idea, and you built a whole house around it. I couldn’t keep up, but I loved seeing it happening and being a part of it. I was good at those things you mentioned. Characters, plot twists. Big shit! You did the tone, you did the pacing. I would’ve thrown in the Deus system all at once—info dump style. You had the idea to space it out via the placards. You came up with Orin’s whole backstory, come on, dude.”

“Okay, this is sounding suspiciously like a circle jerk and it’s sort of making me uncomfortable.”

“Mutual admiration society, though, didn’t we always say that?”

“Yeah…” I growled and pushed my hand up through my hair. I took another sip of gin to aide my ability to take a compliment. “It made it easy to work together, to feel like we were doing real, creative things. Real life creative things are much more complicated.”

“Dude, I wanted to impress you.”

That one sat in the pit of my stomach and made me suck in a frustrated ‘tsk’ that whistled between my teeth and tongue.

“I didn’t say that hoping you’d tell me whether I was successful or not. I really didn’t.”

For the first time, I didn’t feel gut-punched. I didn’t feel sadness. I was able to say it. I took a quick breath, thought about it a bit more earnestly than I ever had, and I said it. “I was so in love with you.”

“Yeah. Me too, I think. Those were some really good times.”

We just left it there, for a stew of a full minute or so. Neither seemed frightened that the other would hang up. We just let the silence happen, let the consideration be given its due process. “Hey. By the way,” Himuro finally spoke up. “How’s it going with Kuroko?”

“We’re happy. We’re… very happy, actually.”

“That’s amazing to hear.”

He didn’t need to tell me he meant it. I heard it in his tone.

“Um,” I began awkwardly. “You know, if this thing takes off, I should really give you a cut. You know, for all the time you—“

“Kagami, shut the fuck up. I’m really glad this is happening, you know? I’m just really glad it’s finally blowing up the way you knew it would.”

That was right, wasn’t it? I’d always gushed and sworn over fast food dinners and late night think sessions about how _Bloodlines_ was going to be it for us, how rich we would be, all sorts of overblown youthful dreams.

How often did those actually come true, I wondered? For all the energy that so many young people put into it, who got to have the moment of knowing, of saying congratulations, of feeling the oddly empty sensation of having to go somewhere else once the dust settled? Nowhere to go but up, though up was a direction I’d not considered going.

“Thanks.”

“I can’t wait to see it on TV. Call me as soon as you know some details about when it might go down?”

“I won’t need to call you, trust me. It’ll be everywhere.”

We ended the conversation succinctly. I promised to call him more often, which basically meant once a month would fulfill the bargain, and he said he’d let me know when the band neared my area again. Easy as that. Simple as that.

I supposed, as I sat at the bar with half a glass of gin and tonic in my stunningly silent apartment, that it was time to start writing. I grabbed my laptop case, slung a jacket on, laced up my boots and made my way to Rainbow’s End. The interior, in the dead of winter, was as inviting and homey as the old sweater Himuro was supposed to be. A considerable thing, then, that his blessing spurred me deeper into that comfort. I didn’t take my usual table, and instead moved closer to the ice-frosted windows. I sat at one of the uncomfortably small bistro tables simply to watch the snow falling, the people trudging along and clutching their coats tighter. I’d gotten used to the ceramic mug and the way it gave me something to wrap my cold hands around. I’d even gotten used to the saucer.

Especially I was used to the way I could always expect a hand on my back at some point of the day, pulling me out of my depths and back into the moment. Aomine’s patchouli scent greeted me and I saw the edge of his long plaid scarf before he leaned further over me to stare at my laptop screen. Nothing particularly incriminating could be gleaned from my page full of plot points and notes to self, so I didn’t think much of letting him peek in.

“ _Red Line_ ,” he read. “Is that still your title?”

“That’s my title, yeah.”

“How’s it coming along, then?” He sighed and walked over to sit in the chair across from me. He reached out for my hand and we clumsily clutched fingers, my bare, coffee-warm hand finding his in an ice-wet glove.

“It’s great.” I smiled, feeling a twinge of sadness for the fact that I still couldn’t give Aomine any indication regarding the scope of my work. I reached over for his hand again once he pulled his gloves off, and we both went silent for a moment. The sadness mixed strongly with a sense of victory, though, a triumphant knowledge that I’d managed to keep something from someone to whom I was almost bafflingly attached, creatively and otherwise. “You?”

“I am nearing completion of my second draft, actually. It’s up to the editors now.” Aomine had always, I’d learned, written at a staggeringly fast pace. Once the idea was in his head, he explained, he had to get it down without fail, lest the threads of ideas coalesce into something more boring and structured. I was jealous (slightly) of his professional responsibility to his own stream of consciousness. I’d read snippets of the new book, though. His stream of consciousness was the most sophisticated I’d ever seen.

“Congratulations.”

He smirked before he pulled up a second bistro table, effectively rearranging the café to accommodate our recent attraction to the idea of working in close quarters. His table faced mine, and without a word we went about it, pulling out notebooks and smartphones, loose-leaf notes and references when necessary. Kuroko took his break and spent it next to me (I didn’t notice him for the first three minutes, naturally), splitting the thermos of soup I’d brought for him before returning to the bar. Tomorrow was date night. Aomine lodged his standard complaint that our attentions would be undivided, but lost himself again just as quickly in work.

Life was reaching a comfortable rut.

By the end of January, I mailed the full framework of the _Red Line_ story to Akashi. I had a pitch meeting via teleconference, during which only caffeine drove me to speak up over my nerves. Akashi, Midorima, and two of the executive producers seemed impressed enough. It was a success. The boys and I fucked until my fingers went numb that night, while I was drunk on Courvousier and triumph and Aomine wondered where it all came from.

Still riding the high of success, I blew up Akashi’s phone with inquiries about the writing process from that point forward. I was advised to wait for the screenwriter. He said the identity of the proposed head writer was key to investments in the project, and that as such I wasn’t allowed to communicate with them directly.

The announcement had me on the defensive, of course. I was still on a crest of accomplishment that fed into the belief that I deserved it, I was good enough, I could handle a screenplay, I could handle a head writer’s gig. I argued it with Akashi, who quashed my protests by claiming that I wasn’t anywhere near the level of the writer they’d acquired. He would neither entertain nor acknowledge any further discussion of the situation, which didn’t mean that I stopped stewing about it in secret. Much to my chagrin, I dealt with Midorima via e-mail and telephone. He was taking a role closer to development for his tenure with the project, waffling between the title of Assistant Director and Production Designer.

I would be credited, the news finally came late February, as co-creator. I began to feel an unpredictable anticipation, projecting my own pride onto the identity of the mystery screenwriter. I was prepared to work with the A List.

Aomine’s new novel, Gaspling, went to press a week later. The comfortable rut was complemented by more meetings behind the closed door of my office, red eye flights for Aomine from the East Coast to the West Coast and everywhere in between, press junkets, a few flights and meetings of my own, and then I was advised that principal shooting would begin in London. Researchers were hired and the script was well underway. I was advised to pack light and Akashi asked what sort of accommodations Kuroko and I would prefer.

Simply put, time was running out to tell Aomine what was really going on.

He was at my apartment on the day I finally received an insured, hand-delivered package from Los Angeles. I signed my name and thought about the ironclad agreements I’d already signed. The non-disclosure policy a week earlier, the redistribution waiver a few days ago. Aomine asked me what the package was all about, and I fumbled over my words as I excused myself to the office, pretending it was something more somber than it certainly was.  

The waivers and disclosure agreements weren’t even in interest of the idea. The name of the screenwriter was left off of even the first copy I received. “Contracts are at stake,” Akashi had explained. “Until the London meetings commence, as far as any of us are concerned, this was written by anyone off the street.”

My mind was swimming with excitement over the possibilities as I pulled the thick, crisp script out of its envelope. How high-profile was the writer involved, and how would I react when on equal footing in a creative meeting with him or her? I entertained some pretty impossible scenarios: P.T. Anderson, Jim Uhls, even J.K. Rowling entered my mind.

THE WINTER CUP, read the title. I smiled at that. A particularly applicable description of the pilot as I’d imagined it, all told.

I sat back in my big, comfortable chair and flipped to the first page. My hand began to tighten on the page immediately. My stomach dropped and my throat began to wobble with some feeling between nausea and breathlessness. I didn’t even make it through the first scene before I threw the office door open, let it bang against the hallway wall, and yelled at Aomine to “Get the _fuck_ over here!” 


	27. ...and the Big Reveal

“Hello?”

“Wow. Okay, maybe I should call back later. You sound awful and also pissed off.”

“Kise, wait! No, don’t. Stay on.”

“Fine.”

“Sorry. I’ve just been… it’s been a hard day.”

“Why, what’s up? Is this about that New York signing you were talking about yesterday?”

“Was that yesterday? Huh. No, not that. That actually will be happening. This is some bullshit. Personal bullshit, I guess.”

“Did I interrupt something? Sounds like you’re in a hurry.”

“I’m taking a walk. I was at Kagami’s house.”

“Awww, did you have a fight with your little friend?”

“Whatever. Don’t you take that tone of voice with me, Kise. But yeah. Yeah, I did.”

“What ha—“

“I have no fucking clue! I’m fucking pissed at him, though! Okay, wait. Okay, get this: he’s been really weird for the last couple of months, telling me it was because he was deep in this creative zone with his novel or _whatever_ , and then earlier today he gets this stupid package. Goes into his office, like he _always_ does lately, and then out of nowhere he’s hauling me in and giving me this huge talking-to about how I took his _job_ , or something? He throws down this fucking _script_ – like I’d ever write a screenplay, first of all – and starts into this whole story about how Akashi was playing us against each other from the beginning? Or something?”

“What?”

“I don’t know! Yeah! Akashi! I don’t even get it, man! So I asked him to explain it, and I swear it took me a good five minutes just to calm him down and make him believe I honestly had no clue what he was talking about. He still doesn’t believe me, I think. He explained it in that shitty condescending way that people do, you know?”

“Wait, hold on…”

“Apparently Akashi’s been planning this huge deal with HBO and Francis Ford Coppola, and there’s a fortune on the line, and Kagami’s been gaming behind my back to be one of the head contributors. He actually came up with the fucking idea behind the whole thing. Didn’t say a word about it, because Akashi told him not to!”

“I’m confused, then. Why did he get mad at you?”

“You seem extremely calm about this.”

“I’m yin to your yang. Just trying to get to you to speak in real sentences. Why was he mad?”

“Because this script… I read it… and it’s _me_. It’s my fucking style. Down to the cadence and language. It’s strange because it’s a lot of dialogue, but the descriptions and the atmosphere… I got chills, reading it. Then I got pissed off. Someone ripped me off. I tried explaining that to Kagami, telling him that I’d honestly been written out of the whole thing from the beginning, on purpose, but he still doesn’t believe me. He’s mad at me, and he’s trying to get in touch with Akashi for an explanation… I don’t know. I left.”

“It really read exactly like you?”

“Kise, it was creepy. I could swear I’ve actually said some of the things in that script. As soon as I know what’s going on, I’m going to consider a lawyer.”

“Now, don’t be so hasty about that.”

“Well, what else would I do? I mean, someone obviously bit my style for this! Don’t _laugh_.”

“You can’t put a patent on style.”

“I’m just pissed off, though! That style is the only thing I have and then some fucker comes along and – under Akashi’s auspices, even! – is able to co-opt that into some piece of mass-media garbage? Like, is Akashi out to get me? Is this over _Miracles_ , still, all this time later? On top of that, I just want to know why a writer with so much talent couldn’t do better.”

“I’m going to ignore the rest and say that I’m flattered.”

“…what?”

“I mean, even Akashi said he wasn’t sure that the dialogue was on point.”

“You know about Akashi’s project?”

“I wrote it.”   


End file.
